


Rope-A-Dope

by Spikey44



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Apocalypse Resolved Off-Page, Ben Hargreeves May Yet Live, Diego Hargreeves Questionable Life Choices, F/M, Gen, Minor Original Character(s), Minor canon divergence, No Beta, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s) as Cannon Fodder, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Sibling Bonding, Siblings Accidentally Ruining Complex Sting Operations, What If Diego Was Really An Undercover Cop All Along, You Never Hear of The Rope-A-Dope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-03-07 11:04:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 37,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18871909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spikey44/pseuds/Spikey44
Summary: The Hargreeves' think they know the story of how Diego got kicked out of the police academy. They think they know all about his vigilantism. But what if they don't? What if Diego was undercover all along and the boiler boom and the janitor gig, the knife harness, the police scanner and the crappy clothes are just his cover? Just how badly can things go wrong when Diego's siblings discover his double life?The answer, in case you were wondering, is very badly.





	1. Prologue: The Proposition That Changes Everything

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is my first time posting anything on this site. I'm new here. I may have screwed up tags and ratings so here are some disclaimers. Violence in this story is basically the same level as the TV show, so it's prominent but not too graphic. Plus, it's Diego flinging knives so blood is inevitable. Deaths will be kept to a minimum. Sex is highly unlikely because I can't write it. Swearing is frequent. I'm also making much of this plot up as I go along, so ratings may change. However this will be multi-chapter because brevity and I parted company many years ago. Also, I am British. I will try to keep Britishisms out of the story and use Americanisms but my spelling is British and some of my phrasing will be too. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy and I love comments!

June 3rd 2013:

Diego Hargreeves slides down the door until he’s sprawled on the floor of his room in the boarding house. His hands shake and his mouth is dry. There’s a ringing in his ears like he’s just woken from a knockout blow in the ring. Nothing feels quite real. The room in front of his eyes blurs and swims. He could be concussed. 

It would be easier if he was. 

Six years of work. Six years of taking any job he could find - including, memorably - an eight month stint with the Flash-Bang Boys as the Wednesday night ‘Variety Act’. (Generally speaking Diego would very much like not to remember those Wednesday nights. G-strings pinch and so, apparently, do handsy forty-year-old housewives after too many margaritas. He lives in terror that there’s a video of him in nothing but a knife belt circulating somewhere.) 

The point is, he scrimped and saved, worked his ass off (and everything else) for the money to go to community college and get the sixty credits he needed to be eligible for the police academy. 

Another five and half months of cadet training; lectures on statutes and procedure he damn well knows don’t mean much in the real world. The one where innocent people die when you hesitate. The one where you die if you blink, or show an ounce of weakness. Five months were he pushed through the slow dawning horror as he realised that most cops are more interested in filling out expense forms and competing over how many traffic violation fines they can collect than in keeping the streets safe. 

Five and half months plus six and half years of the whole world telling him his experience didn’t matter, that being exceptional means being singled out as something that doesn’t fit and isn’t wanted. Of learning that the world wants to crush him, mould him, control him. Where it’s conform or die. 

(If it wasn’t for the lack of knee socks, weird gramophone recordings over breakfast, and an English accent to go with the constant putdowns, he’d almost think he’d never left home at all.) 

But he dealt with it. 

He kept his mouth shut (mostly). He crammed for the tests. He spent the required hours at the range (even though he is better with a knife than any cop with a gun) because this was what he’d worked for since leaving the Academy at seventeen with nothing but a hundred bucks, a suitcase full of knives and the determination that somehow, someway all this shit would be worth it one day. He was going to save lives. 

Hours, weeks and months of slow grinding taunts and jibes, and he took ‘em all; took ‘em in like he was some kind of pacifist Buddhist monk and adversity was his personal road to Nirvana. He took up yoga. He practiced restraint like he was training for an Olympic gold in it. He thought about learning Ikebana because he heard it elevated the consciousness and he really needed a high that wouldn’t come with a possession charge. He was the ‘bigger man’ like Patch told him to be (over and over again until her words were white noise in his ears. Adding to the tension headache that just would not quit.) 

And you know what? It didn’t matter. It was never going to matter because this was as inevitable as the ‘entirely avoidable’ fatalities instructor Gerant claims he and his siblings caused on their missions. 

He maybe could’ve lasted out. He survived seventeen years under the same roof as Luther. He survived Dad. But then cadet Colliard - big, blond, teeth like a freaking horse –decided to make a crack about his family. 

Colliard claimed the Umbrella Academy was a fake. Diego and his siblings weren’t really Sir Reginald’s adopted kids at all; they were actors. Ben’s death was a publicity stunt gone wrong and none of what Diego lived through under his father’s roof was real. 

Diego remembers lifting Ben’s limp body. He remembers how he and Luther carried their brother away from the scene past an endless line of press. Allison and Klaus trailing behind, barely holding each other up. He remembers the utter silence in the house for days afterward. He remembers the silence broken by Klaus screaming and screaming “No, no, no. Not You!" until they had to sedate him. He remembers their father, standing in the entranceway while Mom wheeled Ben’s body away on a gurney, lecturing them on their failure as a team. 

He remembers that Luther locked himself in his bedroom for three days. That he had to kick the door in because he wouldn’t come out to eat. He remembers that the big idiot was still in his uniform. Ben’s blood dried to flaking on his hands. 

He remembers that the sound of Vanya’s violin made him want to punch his fist through the wall. (So he did, which got him a trip to the infirmary, a splint and a lecture from Dad about ‘rendering himself incapable’ should the team need him). 

He remembers staring at one of the fucking hideous portraits of Five, a half drunk bottle of tequila in his good hand wondering which of them would be next. Realising that it was either him or Klaus, because Allison could probably rumour her way out of death and Luther would march over all their corpses if Dad ordered him too. 

So with that in mind he did the only thing he could do. 

He broke Colliard’s face. 

Then he showed him just how real all those hours of training were. With exacting precision, he demonstrated everything he learned in seventeen years as Sir Reginald’s property, if not his kid. For the coup-de-grace, he left Colliard pinned to the wall of the gym with a fistful of blades driven through his clothes and deep enough into the drywall it took two attending EMTs, Greene and Santiago to pry him loose. 

He also got himself expelled. 

Seven years give or take, of single-minded effort and he blew it. 

He doesn’t know what to do now. He doesn’t have a contingency plan. He doesn’t have a plan period. 

He sits on the floor of the room he can’t afford to pay for if he’s not going to be drawing a rookie’s pay check and stares into the magnitude of his fuck up.  
He tried so hard and he failed and he can hear Sir Reginald’s sneer; his father’s complete and total lack of surprise that yet again, Number Two has failed to measure up. 

The knock on the door is an unpleasant surprise -and not just because he’s leaning against it. He scrambles up, knife in hand and stares. 

“Hargreeves, it’s Ortega. Open up.” 

Raymond Ortega was the only instructor in the police academy he respected, the only one who lived up to his ideal of what a cop should be. The man was tough but fair; he didn’t give Diego shit for his childhood, but he didn’t spare him when he screwed up. Diego doesn’t know what he’s doing here now. It makes no sense. 

He opens the door. 

Ortega, short, dark, broad and perpetually annoyed rolls his eyes. “Put the knife down, Hargreeves,” he scoffs, “and come with me.” 

Diego hesitantly lowers his arm. “Am I under arrest?” he asks. He should be. What he did to Colliard goes way beyond assault and into the realms of battery. 

Ortega rolls his eyes again. “You should be. But no. Let’s take a walk. I have a proposition for you.” 

“What?” Diego balks. He received plenty of propositions when he was with the Flash-Bang Boys. He honestly hadn’t thought Ortega the type. 

“I’m giving you another chance Hargreeves,” Ortega says patiently. “You can walk with me and hear what I’m offering, or you can stay here feeling sorry for yourself. Choice is yours.” 

Another chance. The words ring in Diego’s ears. He still doesn’t understand but he knows what opportunity sounds like when she comes knocking. He also knows that whatever Ortega has in mind he is absolutely desperate enough to agree. He gets the feeling Ortega does too. 

“You’re a loose cannon Hargreeves,” Ortega tells him as they stroll casually (mock casually in Diego’s case) through a dog park. “Truth is, if we could’ve found a reason to bar your entry into the academy we would have. No one wants you on the force.” 

Diego is too tired to bristle at the truth. “Yeah well,” he mumbles, “You don’t have to worry about that now.” 

“Maybe,” Ortega says and there’s something in his voice that makes Diego’s heart skip a beat. 

“You can’t follow a chain of command; you think you’re better than the rules. You’re impulsive and violent and not nearly as smart as you think you are,” Ortega continues and Diego’s hopes die even as his temper flares.

What the hell? Did Ortega come all the way to his place, drag him out here and feed him a tiny morsel of hope, just to drag him on his flaws? 

“But,” Ortega says, “You also have initiative. You’re observant and quick on your feet. You enjoy a challenge and you don’t give in easily. You have actual experience in a firefight and combat training most cops don’t.” 

Diego knows all this. He still doesn’t see where Ortega’s going with it. He’s spent the last five months listening to instructors tell him that his combat training is incompatible with police training in de-escalation and that his initiative is ‘insubordination’. 

“The truth is,” Ortega says, “I think it would be a waste to toss you loose; you’re not the sort to go live a quiet life. You’ll either end up dead or looking out at the precinct from the other side of the bars. So I’m offering you a third option.” 

They stop walking. The park is quiet and all Diego can hear is the pulse in his ears until Ortega starts speaking again.

“I already talked to Chief Hennessey. We need undercover operatives; guys like you who can operate independently without back up. Prove to me you can toe the line and follow my orders and I can get you on the force.” 

Diego doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t waste time asking clarifying questions.  
“I’m in,” he says, “whatever it is, I can do it.” 

Ortega doesn’t smile but there’s a gleam in his eyes, something that seems a little like triumph. Diego doesn’t worry about it. Ortega is throwing him a lifeline. He’s going to take it. He’ll deal with the fallout the way he deals with everything else, fists up and knives out, hoping for the best.


	2. Chapter One: A Mission Is Acquired And A Wild Klaus Is Encountered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter Diego has misgivings about corduroy but overcomes them in service of the Greater Good, and Klaus is not a flamingo.

February 18th 2019:

He arrives at Gillespie’s exactly on the hour as requested. The bar is crowded so it takes Diego a moment to spot his contact. When he does spot him he wishes he hadn’t. 

His contact stands at the far end of the bar wearing burgundy corduroy pants with a denim jacket. Diego grimaces with his whole body. He stalks into the room, ignoring the looks he receives. 

Gillespie’s operates in that grey area between neighbourhood bar and dive. It’s about the only place where a man in a knife belt and a middle aged, balding white guy in corduroy can have a conversation and the other people in the bar will be either too polite to comment or realise this is obviously some kind of undercover thing and turn a blind eye. Gillespie’s is in the next town over, and Diego scanned the patrons when he came in. He doesn’t recognise anyone. So that’s alright. 

(It’s not so much his cover he’s worried about. He just really doesn’t want to be seen associating with anyone in burgundy corduroy.)

He throws himself down into a dark corner on the other side of the pool table and waits for Agent Corduroy to join him. He would’ve tried to be more subtly (as subtle as a man wearing twenty-seven knives can be) but Jesus, the man is wearing a denim jacket. The Fed would’ve stood out less if he’d ordered at the bar in an FBI windbreaker. 

Diego hates Feds. 

This guy, whose name he’s already forgotten, is not his first special agent and he won’t be his last. Any excitement he might have felt dealing with a G-man died years ago when he discovered the FBI is even more bureaucratic and pedantic than the police force. A lot of special agents have accountancy degrees. They sit behind desks crunching numbers. The last six years have destroyed so many of his ideals and rotted his fantasies. 

“Officer Hargreeves?” Agent Corduroy asks. He has glasses and a paunch. Diego suppresses the urge to pull a knife. 

He stares at the man instead. Ortega set up this meeting. He would have briefed the Fed on Diego. At the very least he’d’ve told him to look out for the guy wearing all the knives. 

(Contrary to popular opinion – thank you, Eudora – Diego does not actually think walking around in all-black in a visible knife harness day and night constitutes stealth wear. That’s not the point. He’s meant to stand out. And anyway, it’s the knives people remember, not him.)

He continues to stare the man down. He’s been told he has a very intimidating stare, and no, his penetrating stare does not look like he’s just been smacked around the head by a two-by-four. (Thank you again, Eudora). 

Diego has been smacked around the head by a two-by-four before. He got knocked unconscious and dumped in the water hole at Hollyhills golf club. 

None of which is germane to the point at hand. 

“Detective,” he says once the moment has stretched just enough to make Agent Corduroy uncomfortable. 

He doesn’t have a badge or anything official – because he doesn’t get to have a real badge while he’s pretending he’s not a real cop - but he earned the promotion after the Halliwell sting. He doesn’t have anything to prove it, other than an increase in salary, but about the only thing he has to prove any of it is real is the monthly deposit into the checking account he pretends he doesn’t have. 

(On his bad days - like the aforementioned golf club incident – Diego sometimes wonders if his entire existence is in fact a waking coma dream where everything is illusion and in reality, he’s a giant insect. Like something out of those weird books Ben used to read at the breakfast table.) 

His mind is wandering because he’s tired. His cover is exhausting. In order to fulfil the brief that he’s a janitor at a boxing gym with crime fighting delusions, he has to actually be a janitor at a boxing gym who fights crime. 

The work wouldn’t be too bad actually. He likes living and working at Al’s. He likes teasing Eudora at crime scenes he sort-of, isn’t supposed to be at. If he’s honest, he likes that he gets to walk around in all-black and knives and never, ever has to wear a tie. 

The problem is, he actually has a day job, which requires him to keep up surveillance of his targets, compile detailed accounts of that surveillance, regularly update Ortega on any new developments and drop everything else the moment some random Fed wants to talk to him. 

“Sergeant Ortega told me you’ve been monitoring the Vizzinis’,” agent Corduroy looks at him questioningly. 

Diego has a policy of not answering non-questions, or in this case implied questions. If someone wants information they should ask for it like a normal human being not make vaguely sceptical sounding statements. 

“Are you familiar with this man?” Agent Corduroy pushes a polaroid across the table. 

The photograph is of a man in his mid-thirties. Kind of short. Good haircut. Mole on his right cheek. 

Diego nods. “He’s one of Marco’s boys,” he says, “newbie, apparently he worked for a cousin in Jersey.” 

It’s been Diego’s job to watch the Vizzini Family for the last eighteen months. He knows more about Don Giacomo and his outfit than he knows about his own family. Word on the street is the Vizzini outfit is in negotiation with the Knernov syndicate, but no one seems to know if it’s Giacomo calling the shots or one of his boys trying for a takeover. 

Agent Corduroy takes back the picture. “Arturo is one of ours. Deep cover. He failed to make a rendezvous two days ago.” He gives Diego a loaded look and says, “He always makes contact.”

Diego feels a quiver of sympathy. “He’s probably dead.” 

Agent Corduroy shakes his head, a quick negation. He looks almost pained. Diego decides, if it wasn’t for the corduroy, he could actually like the man. 

“Arturo Liga is one of the Bureau’s best undercover operatives,” he says. “Even compromised, he’d work to salvage the mission.” 

“You can’t lie your way out of a bullet, man,” Diego points out. “Marco’s paranoid. He doesn’t mess around. You cross him, you die.” 

“We need to know for sure,” Agent Corduroy insists. “The Bureau doesn’t abandon its people.” 

“What do you want me to do?” Diego asks seriously. 

Agent Corduroy stares at him. His left eye is bigger than his right giving him a permanent squint, although that could be the crappy lighting and the magnification from his glasses. 

“I was told,” the agent says, “that you know the players. Have you seen anything suspicious? Do you have any idea where they might be holding Liga?” 

Diego rolls through the mental index of outfit names and faces he’s memorized, honing in on the men loyal to Marco. He knows that Smiley DeMilo is out of town, but he left over a week ago, which puts him out of the frame. Big Bruno and Petey B are still around. If Marco wanted Arturo taken out he’d get Big Bruno to do it. 

He nods slowly. “I know some places I can look,” he says. It’s his turn to fix the agent with a loaded look. “If I find him alive,” he tells him. “I’m gonna do what I gotta do to get him out. You prepared for that?”

Diego is an undercover operative, he knows the importance of salvaging an op no matter the cost –he just doesn’t happen to agree with that particular philosophy. Where was the justice in letting people die just to lock up some mafia scumbag who was going to be replaced by the next scumbag in line anyway? 

(This was a sentiment he knew not to express to Ortega. It wasn’t really in line with policy and Ortega was already worried he was going ‘native’. Whatever the hell that meant.)

Diego has been told, many times, that even for an undercover operative with ‘ludicrously lax oversight and a terrifying amount of autonomy to abuse his position’ (Eudora’s words) he tended to push the envelope when it came to his actions. Ortega was constantly reminding him he wasn’t Wyatt Earp, this wasn’t the Wild West, and the dead part of ‘Dead or Alive’ no longer applied. 

Agent Corduroy gave him a shrewd look. At least he thought it was meant to be shrewd. The lighting in this bar sucked. 

“That’s why I’m here,” he said pleased. “Marco will never believe the knife nut with the leather fetish attacking his businesses is associated in anyway with law enforcement. You can get my man out and protect the op at the same time.” 

Diego cocks his head. “So carte blanche?” he asks, just to be sure.

Agent Corduroy tapped his fingers over the polaroid. He nodded once firmly. “Find Arturo and I’ll give you whatever cover you need.” 

Diego was starting to think he might have to rethink his views on men who wore corduroy, or at least FBI agents who wore corduroy. 

In fact, he was feeling pretty pumped for the mission as he drove back to the city. 

A mood that carried over when he pulled up to fill up on gas but was doused immediately as he opened the door to the store and encountered a scene that was both bizarre and yet, strangely familiar. 

A man wearing a pair of violently pink faux-leather pants, gold rimmed sunglasses and a cowboy hat and nothing else was being chased around the store by the acne-scarred teenaged attendant. The (depressingly familiar) semi-naked man was flapping his arms and walking, with surprising speed given his peculiar gait, with his neck and head thrust out ahead of him. The effect was weirdly bird-like. 

“Jesus Christ.” Diego shut his eyes and counted backward to five in his head before shouting, “Klaus!” 

His brother did not even look at him, and if Diego hadn’t lived with him for seventeen years he might’ve been fooled, but he saw the slight hesitation in his walk, the stiffening of his brother’s shoulders and recognised the tell-tale signs from their childhood that Klaus knew he was busted. 

Diego stepped in front of his brother as he tried to flounce down the chiller aisle. There was a pack of Twinkies stuffed down his pants. Diego was surprised they fit. He yanked the smashed packet out. 

“What is it this time?” he asked tiredly. “Jaguar again?”

Once Klaus had managed to get out of being hauled in by Rodriguez on patrol by pretending to be so high he thought he was a jaguar. He’d leapt on the squad car, cocked his leg like a freaking ballerina (according to Rodriguez) and proceeded to get pretty damn close to licking his own ass. Rodriguez had let him go in total disgust. 

(When told this story the only thing that surprised Diego was how completely and totally unsurprised he was). 

“Heeyyyy, Diego. Diego Hiiiiiiii,” Klaus looks at him with wide, stoned panda eyes and started patting at his chest like some inebriated nightmare child of a kitten and a lousy pickpocket. 

“Cut the crap, Klaus,” he warns. 

His brother is high. He is always high. But he is not that high. Diego can tell. Klaus knows that Diego knows he’s not that high but they both know that just because Diego has seen through his bullshit does not mean that he can’t be suckered. 

“I’m calling the cops,” the angry teen attendant says. Or squeaks. The kid is like, fourteen? 

Diego rolls his eyes, peels Klaus’ fingers off his knife harness and steps in front of the kid. 

“No, you’re not,” he tells him. The kid can’t stop staring at the knife affixed to the strap travelling up his chest. 

He holds up the battered pack of Twinkies. “I’m gonna pay for this and whatever else you think he stole and then we’re gonna leave. Okay?” 

“Okay,” the kid says, slightly awed. 

“You,” Diego points at Klaus. “Go get in the car and don’t touch anything.” 

Klaus squawks. He literally squawks. He sounds like a chicken. A muscle in Diego’s jaw twangs painfully. 

“Klaus,” he says, low and warning. 

Klaus flounces out of the store, knees weirdly high and arms flapping. Diego watches to make sure he climbs into the passenger side and doesn’t disappear into the night. He pays for his gas and a laundry list of items that Klaus couldn’t possible have secreted on his person unless he inhaled them. 

He drops into the front seat and throws the pack of Twinkies at Klaus’ head. 

“Hey,” Klaus rubs his head, but then rips open the packet of Twinkies and starts gorging. 

Diego stares at him. “What the hell was that?” he asks. 

Klaus stops eating. He swallows and wipes his mouth almost daintily. Diego knows he is in for a wild ride. 

“It was terrible!” Klaus says. “I was at the watering hole and the crocodiles were after me. I’d lost my mate…Gertie…and the nest had been ravaged. Ravaged I tell you. It all happened so fast! I’m grooming my plumage and the next minute – bam--” Klaus begins miming large gnashing jaws, “--this crocodile comes for me—“

“So,” Diego says interrupting, “not a jaguar?” 

Klaus rears back in his seat, hands pressed to his chest. “How dare you associate me with the predators, Diego! Shame on you. Look at me,” he strokes his hands down his pants. “Look at this plumage. I’m a flamingo, Diego. A majestic, exquisite…”

“I’m not buying this, you know that right?” 

Klaus slumps in his chair. “Some people have no imagination,” he mutters darkly and then stiffens, turning to glare at the empty back seat. “Shut it, Ben.”

Diego twitches, but controls his reaction immediately. He’s not going to rise to the bait. Technically he knows his brother sees dead people, and Ben is dead, but the fact is Diego and his siblings have zero evidence Klaus’ power is real. 

Klaus is the only one who can see the dead. His power can’t be verified but there is ample evidence that Klaus is a liar. He’s lied to all of them at some point, usually about getting clean. 

Diego loves his brother. More than that, Klaus is the only one of his siblings he actually likes – but he can’t trust him. There is nothing about Klaus that is reliable. Klaus is jazz hands and entertaining bullshit and he’s been that way almost as long as Diego can remember. 

(Diego lives in fear of the day Klaus actually manages to kill himself. He’s heard all the crap about how you can’t help someone who won’t help themselves – and he knows that he can’t make Klaus get clean. He’s tried. Even dad tried for his own selfish reasons. Nothing works. So Diego resigns himself to reality and tries to be grateful today isn’t the day he buries another brother.)

He turns the ignition and puts the car in gear. He doesn’t ask where Klaus is headed (the answer is nowhere). Instead he puts the car in gear and tells him, “Put your seatbelt on and shut up.” 

Arthur Liga is going to have to wait. The Vizzini Family is going to have to wait. Diego is making a waffle run.


	3. Chapter Two: Lunch and a Rescue, To Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Diego is competent at his job.

February 21st 2019:

Diego rented a storage unit where he kept his type writer, a file cabinet for his hated paperwork and a clothes rack full of ‘functional adult’ clothing, as Eudora put it. He also had a whiteboard covered in pictures of his targets. He’d bought a ball of yarn so he could connect the pictures together with wool lines, just for the aesthetic of the thing, but he didn’t have the patience for that stuff so the yarn stayed in a drawer. 

That morning he'd stopped by the unit so he could put on his civvies and conduct covert recon in Vizzini territory. 

He always felt like he was in costume when he put on soft sweaters and jeans, like he was pretending to be something less than he was. Less dangerous, less damaged. Less real. He’d taken a class in tailoring so he could modifying most of the clothing for concealed carry. Extending or ripping out pockets so he could hide a blade or reach the slim thigh holster he wore under loose jeans. It was less than ideal and the seconds he lost pulling a blade out from under his clothing grated on his nerves, but sometimes it was necessary to pretend. 

Today being a case in point.

Wearing civvies worked like camouflage; the Vizzini brothers knew what he looked like, or they thought they did, but no one recognised him when he strolled into the deli on Westmoorland run by Marco’s brother-in-law and ordered a beef-on-rye, hold the mustard. 

He’d used a little concealer on the larger of his two facial scars, just to smooth out the edges and was carrying a green backpack over one shoulder. The pack was loaded with knives, a rolled newspaper, a heavy flashlight and his telescopic lens camera, most of which he would not need, but he was like a boy-scout. He believed in being prepared. He looked like a tourist or a student. Someone harmless. 

He was proud of the disguise, because it was the work of months to perfect, back when he was sixteen. 

In the months after Ben died their father had given the rest of them more freedom. Diego thought at first it was guilt, but now he thinks it was Sir Reginald bowing to the inevitable; he’d known he wouldn’t be able to keep them penned in much longer. Allison had one foot out the door even before Ben’s death, and she wasted no time running off to L.A. as soon as she secured an agent. Klaus was in and out constantly, Dad unable to keep him trapped inside, which basically left Diego and Luther as the only two he had any control over back then, and in Diego's case at least, that control had been increasingly tenuous. 

(Vanya didn’t count. She never had.)

So they were given ‘free time’ to explore the city; a couple of afternoons a week where they could walk around incognito and learn how to pass as normal human beings. 

Dad probably thought if he gave them a longer leash he could stop a jailbreak, but with Ben dead, Five long gone and Allison booking a one-way ticket to stardom, the whole thing was an exercise in shutting the barn door after the cows had bolted. 

Diego put the time to good use. While Luther haunted record stores, Allison went to Go-See’s, Klaus scored on street corners and Vanya did whatever she did, Diego watched people. 

He rode the bus from terminus to terminus. He bought fast food and sat on park benches observing the dog walkers and the old guys playing chess. He learned how people talked and walked and dressed. 

He took notes and researched idioms in the library. He went to the movies; not because he knew anything about movies or even cared, and not because he wanted to be in them, like Allison, but because people talked about movies. He stole Allison’s old copies of teen magazines and he practiced the new words he learned in his bedroom mirror until he felt like he might actually be able to pass. 

(He has never been able to view the ‘real world’ as anything other than what it is, a jungle that everyone tries to survive. The flimsy ‘rules’ just a veneer over the dog-eat-dog free for all hidden under the surface. He prefers it that way. He knows how to survive a brawl.)

All this means, is that he can blend in when he has too. He’s even good at it. Because like a knife can be sheathed, Diego knows how to soften his edges and swallow his rage (for short durations and among strangers). 

He sits by the window in the deli, pulls out his newspaper and screws up the clues in the cryptic crossword while pretending not to watch Big Bruno have a heated discussion with a red headed man whose face looks like one gigantic freckle. 

Diego doesn’t recognise Freckle, and he regrets he can’t take a picture. 

He can toss a tracking bug into Freckle’s messenger bag from across the room without anyone noticing and he was definitely able to throw a four inch nail into Big Bruno’s front right tire when he arrived with enough force to punch through to the inner tube. The air's been wheezing out this whole time. Diego watched the tire flatten.

He slips out of the deli, feeling pretty pleased with himself, while Big Bruno is cussing out his car and Freckle, who doesn’t seem to know how to change a tire either. 

He walks two blocks to where he parked his car and waits for Freckle to start moving. He follows the man out of the city to the suburbs. He’s a little surprised when Freckle pulls into the empty lot of a derelict crazy golf course. 

Driving by the course, Diego parks in a residential neighbourhood, changes into his ‘work clothes’ in the back seat and jogs back. 

(No one notices the man in leather and a domino mask ambling down the street. Or if they do, they’re wise enough to stay inside and hide behind the curtains.)

Freckle’s car is still in the lot, but Freckle is gone. The beeping light on his tracker tells Diego Freckle is somewhere inside. 

It’s broad daylight and the Dutch windmill at hole four is missing three of its four blades, someone has cut the head off the dragon on hole nine and Diego is mildly freaked out by the giant porcupine at hole three. He can’t figure out what the hell is going on with the angles on hole five, which tells him all he needs to know about why this place went bust. 

None of the fibreglass structures are large enough to hold a person. 

Diego edges closer to the abandoned store. The windows are smashed in, the open store front is full of empty racks and a couple of shelves with dusty big gulp cups lined up beside the shadow of a long since removed squishy machine. 

There’s a door leading to a backroom. Freckle is inside and he’s not alone. The sound of a beating is unmistakable. 

There is a concept in Kinesiology of motor redundancy. Basically for every action there are a multitude of ways of achieving said action. It’s a concept Diego is fond of, because to his way of thinking it means that there is never a right or wrong way to do something, just different, but equally valid, ways of achieving the same result. 

For instance he could listen at the door to see if he can identify who is inside. He could call the regular cops, as whoever is inside with Freckle isn’t there willingly and Freckle is definitely trespassing. He could try and kick in the door (he really wants to kick in the door) but doing that might get the hostage killed. 

So Diego does none of the above. 

He edges out of the store, and goes around back. There’s a window high in the wall. Too small to get through. There’s also another door, metal. Secure. A border of weeds has sprouted up around the building. The weeds are seeded with golf balls. Carefully he picks them up and studies the window again. 

The window is about six and a half feet from the ground and Diego guestimates that the room is six by ten. The sounds he heard makes him think that Freckle is beating on someone tied to a chair in the middle of the room. The chair will be underneath the window. Freckle is probably facing the chair. 

It’s a slam dunk. He barely has to direct the ball at all. 

He starts to run as soon as the ball smashes through the window. He runs around to the front of the store and hurls another ball at the door. He doesn’t have the force to give the ball enough velocity to break through but it leaves an indent and the noise is loud as a gunshot. He dives behind the counter and waits.

Like a dumbass, Freckle fires through the door. Once, twice, three times. Diego smirks. He rolls a gulf ball gently across the floor, forcing it to stop just in front of the door.

Throwing another ball into the air, he controls the trajectory so that instead of falling to the ground the ball arcs around and strikes the door. 

Thwack. 

The door opens and Freckle bursts out, gun drawn. He’s bleeding from a raised welt on the side of his head and his face is cut from the shattered window glass. 

Freckle steps on the gulf ball on the floor, his foot slips out from under him. His arms pinwheel as he tries to catch his balance. The gun sails from his hand. 

Diego tosses the last of the gulf balls. It launches up into the air, curves gracefully, travelling the distance between the counter and Freckle and smashes into Freckle’s nose. Freckle hits the ground and starts rolling around in pain. 

Diego grabs Freckle and hauls him inside the room, slamming the door. 

Arturo Liga sits in a chair, duct taped and bound. He’s swollen and beaten and he stinks like he’s been wearing the same bloody clothes for days. (He has.) But he’s alive. Diego is kind of surprised. Not just that Marco kept him alive but that a random hunch to follow Big Bruno to lunch has paid off. 

(He thought he’d have to try harder. Maybe conduct some targeted B&E, shake down some of the lower ranked goons. Bug Marco’s wife’s hair salon. He’s sort of disappointed. He hasn’t had the chance to conduct unlawful surveillance or use his lock picks in weeks).

He rips the tape from Arturo’s face and winces when he takes off about a day’s worth of beard with it. There is just no way of ripping duct tape off gently. 

“Who the hell are you?” Liga demands, taking in the knife belt and the mask and somehow managing to look pretty judgemental for someone who smells like week old roadkill. 

Diego ignores him. He scans the room, which is some kind of office space. There’s a desk and a couple of metal file cabinets and a faded, out-of-date cat calendar on the wall. There’s also a camera in the corner of the ceiling. The red light indicates its recording. 

Diego finds a roll of duct tape in the desk drawer. He binds Freckle at wrist and ankle and drags him over to the wall near the file cabinets. He pins him there by driving one of his knives through the drywall just under Freckle’s bound wrists.

Eventually Freckle could cut his way loose using the blade, so Diego draws back his fist and knocks him out clean. 

He pulls another two knives and stands with his back to the camera, facing Arturo and blocking the cameras view of the other man. 

“Did they make you?” he asks.

“What?” 

Liga is either a really good actor or he’s concussed because he stares at Diego blankly before squirming in his bindings. 

Diego presses the tip of his blade just under Liga’s chin. The blade is sharp but he knows exactly how much pressure to apply to make this look real without hurting the other man. 

“Does Marco know you’re FBI?” he asks again. 

Liga’s eyes widen. “What the hell?” He rocks in his seat. “You’re crazy.” 

Diego rolls his eyes. That’s a no. 

“Why’d he take you?” 

“Are you working with Stefano?” Liga blurts out. “‘Cuz I told him I wasn’t interested. I don’t want nothin’ to do with any of that shit.” 

Diego cocks his head. “Stefano did this to you?” 

That makes no sense. Big Bruno is Marco’s man – unless he isn’t anymore. Huh. Diego knew little brother was muscling in on Marco’s business but he hadn’t realised he’d turned Marco’s best enforcer. That was useful intel. 

“I’m cutting you loose,” he tells Arturo, “but I gotta make this look good, okay? I’m supposed to protect your cover.” 

He raises his right arm where the camera can see the motion. He flips a knife, catches it. Flips it again. Arturo Liga watches the knife intently, which means he doesn’t see Diego rock back on the heel of his left foot and kick him full in the chest with his right. 

The chair crashes to the ground and Liga with it. Diego squats over him and grabs a fistful of his filthy shirt. He cuts through the nylon rope around his middle.   
“Fight back,” he tells Liga - who possibly doesn’t know this is faked for the camera because he isn’t pulling his punches when he comes up swinging. 

Not that it matters. Liga is battered, dehydrated and possibly has internal injuries. He fights like Klaus used to when they were kids, all wind-milling arms and hooked fingernails and absolutely zero coordination. Diego smacks him down easily and pins him to the ground. 

He stabs Liga in the shoulder. 

He’s careful. Striking where the bone is close to the flesh and avoiding muscle or ligament. It’s barely more than a needle scratch, but as Diego hates needles that’s not saying much. The important thing is, it looks good. Diego telegraphs the downward sweep of his arm for the camera, obscuring his aim by leaning forward over Liga’s body. 

“I’m calling the cops with your location,” he tells Liga, speaking close to the other man’s ear. He figures Liga can decide whether he wants to be around when the cops arrive or not. The sting has gone bad, it should be his call if he ends it. 

Standing he walks over to Freckle, who is still unconscious, and reclaims his knife. He turns and waves to the camera. Then he unlocks the back door and strolls out, whistling between his teeth.

He calls Ortega from a payphone down the block. 

“So Stefano is making a play against his brother?” Ortega scoffs. “It would make our job easier if they kill each other.” 

“I’m on camera,” he tells Ortega. “Someone was watching.” 

There’s a brief moment of silence before Ortega says, “Good. Marco’s too cautious to come after you, but Stefano’s an idiot with something to prove. We can use that.”

“What do you want me to do?” 

“I’ll have to liaise with the Feds, you know how they get, but for now…back off the Vizzinis’ trail for a while. Go cause trouble for violent crime or something.” 

Diego grins. Eudora works in violent crime. He hasn’t seen her in weeks, his own investigations keeping him from annoying her at crime scenes. 

He’s heard on the scanner there’s been a spate of violent home invasions in Cherry Acres. Maybe he’ll spend some time ‘patrolling’ the area. Maybe he’ll just happen to cross Detective Patch’s path while he’s doing it.


	4. Chapter Three: Knife Fight in a Sex Shop Parking Lot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diego introspects, bickers with Eudora and also gets into a fight in a sex shop parking lot. Because reasons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. I just wanted to say how delighted I am that people have been reading, commenting, and leaving kudos on this story. Thank you! 
> 
> Also, if you are wondering where the other Hargreeves are. I promise that they will all be turning up soon. I kind of needed to set up the actual plot before I could get to the fun part where the Hargreeves siblings screw everything up! I'm especially eager for Vanya to make her appearance, because jeez, does Diego have issues with his littlest sister that need resolving!

March 12th 2019

Diego is talking to Marcy about her pimp. Donnie has been pushing bad coke on some of the girls, Lila – barely survived. Diego is noting down the details of Donnie’s movements so he can have a ‘chat’ with the man when three large men start toward them. 

“You know them?” He asks Marcy. She shakes her head. 

“Nothing to do with me.” Marcy splits, hurrying down the street in her stilettos. 

Diego pulls a knife and faces the men. One of them is carrying a length of reticulated chain in his hand. The bearded guy pulls a knife. The one with the glasses hangs back, watching. Diego drops into a fighter’s stance, tossing his knife from hand to hand. 

There aren’t many people on the street yet, it’s rained all day and at just gone sunset, the usual night crowd hasn’t crawled out of their holes. Marcy met him in the convenience store near Al’s, walking back with him to her ‘patch’ before the johns start cruising. All the same, the street’s not empty. The liquor store is open. Marlon is sweeping the floor of his barber store and Diego saw four different customers enter the sex shop in the five minutes he and Marcy were talking on the corner. 

Every instinct both natural and trained into him by his father, tells Diego to throw his blade at the guy at the back. He’s the most deadly because the leaders always hang back, and if he’s hanging back he probably has a gun. He can fling a blade at the first guy and let it fly without a thought –it’s a straight shot. He’ll still have plenty of time to duck under chain guy’s arm and meet knife guy’s forward charge. 

But he holds back. If he was a vigilante for real, or if he was still what his father made him, he’d do it. Hell, if this was at the docks, away from civilians and witnesses, he’d attack first. It’s what he was trained to do; it’s what he wants to do. 

There is nothing in Diego that was made for defence (except his ego, which requires a lot of defence.) He was raised to be an attack dog, not a guardian, and he knows it.

But he’s a cop. A hidden cop, an unacknowledged cop – but still a cop. He might not agree with the rules, he might know that the ‘protect and serve’ crap doesn’t mean what it’s supposed to mean -that most of the guys on the force believe that what they protect is their pay check and what they serve is their egos - but it does mean something to him. Marlon is seventy-five. Marcy has a five year old son. He won’t start a fight on the street with civilians around. 

So he breaks and runs down the alley that leads around back behind the Pleasure Emporium. It hurts his pride to do it, but the guys follow him off the street. 

He whips around and throws the knife that grazes lurker’s bicep. Lurker yelps and drops back even further, clutching his arm. Diego catches a hint of a holster strap under his jacket. 

The bike chain wraps around his forearm, pulling him off balance. Knife guy has terrible form. He telegraphs his lunge. Diego throws himself down on the ground, dragging chain guy with him. He kicks knife guy in the right knee, utilising a move he learned break dancing to flip back onto his feet. 

Vaulting over the low wall of the Emporium’s employee parking lot, Diego rushes lurker guy. He flips a knife, changing his grip. Lurker head butts him (which hurts. A lot.) He staggers back, twisting to the side to avoid a right hook. 

The three men converge on him. 

The bike chain (a shockingly effective weapon) smacks him across the shoulder blades. Knife guy gives up the blade and pummels with his fists, landing a good one to Diego’s right kidney. Lurker draws his gun. Diego manages to twist and hurl chain guy in front of him. 

Lurker swears in what might be Russian (having been raised in near isolation Diego has a poor ear for none English languages). He puts up the gun and comes at him with fists and feet. 

After that it’s a brawl. Diego’s heart sings and his brain shoots sparks. His power, the power that lets him control the motion of any object he throws, lights up his synapses. He can sense a punch before it’s thrown, his mind tracking the movement of each man as if he has panoramic vision. 

It’s invigorating and confusing, his power picking up more sensory feedback than he can deal with. He’s in danger of overload as feints and sidesteps and punches and kicks flash in his mind a split second before they land, barely giving his body time to react. 

A voice yells, “Police. Drop your weapons.” 

“Shit,” Diego slurs splitting blood. He freezes guiltily and the bike chain catches him on the side of the head. His knee buckles more in surprise than the impact. 

“I said drop it,” Eudora snarls gun out and pointed at chain guy. 

Possibly-Russian guy vaults over the wall and breaks for the alley. Eudora’s attention is momentarily distracted. Diego sees the quiver in knife guy’s right leg, knows he’s about to throw himself at Eudora. He lashes out with a kick that knocks knife guy to the ground. 

Chain guy drops the chain and puts his hands up.

Eudora co-opts the Emporium’s staff break room turning it into a temporary holding cell while she calls in backup and Diego holds an ice pack to his split lip and eyes a selection of prostate massagers with a mixture of curiosity and concern. 

Rodriguez and Greene arrive to haul the two silent scumbags away. 

“Diego,” Rodgriquez greets him with a fist bump. Diego has been his favourite person ever since he saved him from a potentially fatal shootout at Lucille’s dry cleaners (that was a weird night). 

Greene rolls his eyes. “Should’ve known you’d be involved when we got a call about a knife fight at a sex shop.” 

Diego is still thinking up a comeback (It’s possible the chain to the head dulled his rapier wit) when Eudora strides over looking like thunder. Greene and Rodriguez vamoose. Eudora stares at him, arms crossed. 

“Seriously?”

“Hey,” he puts up his hands, “I’m the innocent party. They attacked me.” 

Eudora’s Look shifts by degrees into something that, if she was using her words, would turn the air blue. Then she lets her tension out in one cleansing breath.

“Who are they Diego?” she asks him tiredly.

“I don’t know, Eudora. I mean it.” He looks away and asks, “What are you doing here anyway?” 

Eudora isn’t a beat cop and even when she had a patrol, it wasn’t this side of the tracks. 

“I got an anonymous call,” she tells him. She rolls her eyes. “I know it was Marcy. I recognised her voice from that time you bought her to the station to make a statement about that guy who beat her up. She said you were in trouble.”

Diego lights up inside and out. Eudora glares at him, “Don’t get any ideas. I was worried you’d do something boneheaded.” 

Diego sits forward in his chair, hands clasped. “You were worried,” he purrs. 

It’s a fun dance, teasing Eudora, poking her until she admits she cares, or gets so pissed at him she tazes him, which in the language of their not-relationship is the same thing. It’s a fun game, until it’s not. Because Eudora does give a shit and he gives a shit. It’s just that they don’t work. Not together. 

And it’s not all Diego’s fault. 

Eudora needs the world to make sense according to what she thinks the rules are. Diego has always been outside her scope. He’s an exception to almost every rule, not just because he chooses to be, but because he doesn’t make sense in her world view. He was raised as a killer and sent out to fight terrorists as a pre-teen. That shit shouldn’t happen in the world Eudora lives in. 

When he got expelled from the police academy that should have been it, according to Eudora. He broke the rules and he earned his punishment. He should never have gotten a second chance, especially not one that rewarded his violent tendencies. Eudora accepts his cover, because her Captain and Sergeant Ortega and the D.A’s office all support his undercover missions, but in her heart of hearts Eudora can’t accept it. 

Or him. 

Diego knows what it looks like when he fails to measure up to someone’s standards. He learned eventually that his father wasn’t worthy of the effort, that if anything, it was Sir Reginald who failed him and his siblings (He’s the reason Ben died). 

Eudora though, she is worth it. Eudora is a good person. She’s a great cop in a precinct full of guys who aren’t. She cares as much as he does and she believes in goodness, not just in people but in the law. She believes rules and regulations are there to protect people. 

Diego can’t do that. 

He knows he will only ever see rules and regulation the way his father taught him to. Rules were half an hour of recreation time once a week on Saturday. Regulation was having to wear the same uniform day in day out and style his hair in the exact way Sir Reginald demanded. Rules were silence at the dinner table and everyone assigned a seat. Regulation was being hooked up to heart monitors every night, and knowing there was a camera in the corner of his bedroom ceiling. 

But that’s not Eudora’s world. She grew up loved and cherished – the way she should be – and Diego lo…appreciates…that about her. That Eudora is normal and decent and can’t even imagine a world where the rules hurt people, but sometimes he wishes she could. Sometimes he wishes he could put the words together that will paint the picture for her, make her see that there is another side to the story. His side. 

Diego stands up, dumping the ice pack on the chair. “You gonna arrest me, Patch?” he asks. 

“What aren’t you telling me?” she shoots back. “We have an agreement remember, we share intel on our cases.” 

They do, mostly because neither of them can mind their own business where the other is concerned. Eudora might disapprove of almost everything he does, but that doesn’t mean she won’t vicariously live his missions through him. He forced a two-way exchange of information because while he might like it when Eudora takes control some of the time, he wouldn’t be him if he didn’t push back. Eudora sort of resents it, especially when he turns up at her crime scenes and makes her go through the act of arresting him, but turnaround his fair play. 

“The guy who got away. I think he was Russian,” he tells her, because he might hate other peoples’ rules but he does stick to his own. 

Patch knows his investigation maybe better than he does. She catches on immediately. “You think he works for Knernov.” 

Diego shrugs. 

“You need to talk to Ortega.”

“Yeah.” 

“I mean it,” Eudora continues as if he hadn’t spoken, “don’t go after Khernov without clearance. His guys are dangerous.” 

Diego scowls. “So am I.” 

Eudora scowls right back, “This isn’t a comic book Diego. You can’t just take on a bunch of human traffickers in the middle of the street like it’s the O.K. Corral.”

Diego smirks. “I think you’re getting your genres mixed up, Eudora.” 

“Promise me you won’t go after that guy,” Eudora presses. 

Diego looks away. 

“Diego I mean it—“ 

He snaps. “You just can’t help yourself, can you? Would it kill you to trust me, just once?” 

Eudora squares up to him. “If you go after Khernov without a plan you’ll get yourself killed.”

“I can handle myself—“ 

“I’ve seen your idea of handling yourself Diego—“ 

“Jeez guys,” Greene quips as he shuffles past with knife guy cuffed in front of him, “I get that this place puts you in the mood. But take the foreplay someplace else, okay?” 

“Screw you, Jerry,” Diego snarls. At the same time Eudora snaps,  
“Stuff it, Greene.” 

Officer Greene beams at them both. “I’m flattered, but my wife might object.” 

Eudora rolls her eyes and tosses her head. Diego lets the tension out of his shoulders. He waits until both Greene and Rodriguez are gone.

“I know what I’m doing, Eudora,” he says quietly. 

Eudora shakes her head and doesn’t meet his eyes. “Just do it away from me, okay? I don’t need the hassle.” 

She walks away but turns back to him at the door. She doesn’t exactly smile, or she stops herself before it’s visible, but it’s enough that she looks back.   
They don’t work and he knows they can’t work. Neither of them know how to change or bend, but he’s glad he’s not the only one who wishes it was different.


	5. Chapter Four: Countdown to a Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is foreshadowing.

March 13th 

After checking in with Ortega Diego learnt that Arturo Liga has been pulled from his undercover job and put into protective custody. Special Agent Peters (AKA Agent Corduroy) was pretty pissed that Diego stabbed his agent, until he learned about the camera. The two guys Rodriguez and Greene carted away both had rap sheets longer than his arm, one of them, Knife Boy (AKA Dougie Clair) was the brother of Amber Paglianetti, wife of one of Stefano Vizzini’s best men. 

Diego I.D’s the guy who got away from a photo line-up, Andre Posca, a low level agent in Knernov’s outfit. 

The attack on the street coupled with Arturo’s account of Stefano’s people trying to turn him into a mole, pleased Agent Peters and Ortega. It was proof that Knernov was moving into town and Stefano was helping him. 

What all this meant for Diego was that his months of careful surveillance was mostly a waste of time. The only good to come out of it was that the long game of rope-a-dope he’d been playing had finally paid off, Stefano and Knernov’s people were coming for him. 

After a lengthy debrief that changed little (whoever said knowledge was power needed to quit chess and get out more) Diego sought out Detective Kaur in Vice. He told her about Donnie and the bad product. He agreed to wear a wire when he went after Donnie, who caved easily and started naming names after Diego pinned him to a table of a Korean restaurant with half dozen metal chopsticks. 

All in all, not a bad day. 

Driving home, his car filling with the sour heat of Kimchi, Diego saw a figure moving, hunched shouldered, through the rain on the sidewalk. Pintsized and soaked, her violin case strapped to her back, Vanya stood out like a target. Diego slowed down, stretching out an arm to roll down the passenger window.

{We were never a real family.}

Snatching his hand back Diego ground his teeth, staring dead ahead. The sudden sleety deluge had created a tailback and he was stuck behind a laundry van, with a hearse tailgating him. Vanya was just ahead of him, by about two car lengths. She moved slowly, head down and trudging like the whole world was kicking her ass. She didn’t have an umbrella. Her denim shirt was soaked through. She was alone. 

Diego knew she lived across town. He didn’t know what she was doing walking in the rain, or why she didn’t wait for a bus at a shelter, or just duck in a doorway out of the rain. It wasn’t like he’d ever understood Vanya. 

(Apparently the feeling was mutual.)

{I can’t recall a single good memory involving my brother Diego. While Luther ignored me, Diego always treated me like an interloper. He was like a dog, barking and bearing his teeth, trying to drive me away anytime it seemed like the others might want me around. The irony is, I don’t think any of my siblings really wanted him around either. He resented a lot of things, and he let that resentment turn him into a bully.}

The passage was a lie. Not the part about how they all hated each other most of the time, or even the part about how he taunted her until she left him alone or how when the rest of them finally had some peace he couldn’t deal with her demands to be included, whining like a baby. 

But she was lying about the memories. If she couldn’t remember good times it was because she didn’t want to, because even when things sucked – and they did – there were good times. 

He remembers donuts at Griddy’s, the seven of them sneaking out in that sweet short time when there were still seven of them. He remembers boosting Vanya up through the broken window when they snuck back in. 

He remembers her damned peanut butter, marshmallow sandwiches. He remembers how none of them ate the sandwiches because they all knew who they were for. 

He remembers and that’s why he turns down Harvey Street, taking a detour that adds ten minutes to his journey but means he leaves Vanya in his wet dust. 

He’s read her book cover to cover, so many times her written words are etched into his memory banks, each passage feeding the anger in his gut that makes just her name a splinter in his brain, rubbing against soft tissue and leaving abrasions. It’s like lactic acid build up, or an untreated burn. It’s the way she’d written about Five, like she was the only one who cared he was gone. It’s the way she’d written a three page, clinical description of Klaus’ first OD, like she didn’t care that he was her brother and could’ve died. 

It’s the way that while the rest of them were worked like dogs, trained into killers and told that all that would ever matter about them was their powers, all Vanya had to do was stay out of the way and play her violin. 

Did she think the rest of them were happy, back then? Did it never occur to her that there were worse things happening in that house than being ignored? 

Five vanished –Dad never looked for him.

Ben died – Dad didn’t care.

Klaus was a junkie because he was too weak to stand up to their training.

Diego spent his childhood convinced he was one failure away from becoming Klaus, the team disappointment, broken, high, screaming at shadows. Or maybe lost like Five, with no one caring. He fought to be noticed, to be heard, to be counted because if he fought hard enough he’d survive. 

But Vanya? She didn’t have to trade blood, sweat and tears to earn her place under Sir Reginald’s roof. 

(And she thought she had the right to tell the world THEY let HER down?)

Screw her. He hoped she died alone (like Five) with nothing to comfort her but her fucking book reviews. 

He went home, ate take out and prowled the streets all night, wrestling with the memory of Vanya’s lonely form fading from his mirror view. He didn’t know the name of the feeling clawing at his guts. 

(Guilt. It was guilt). 

 

March 16th

Someone slashed his tires while he was in the laundromat; Diego checked the undercarriage for bugs and explosives before calling a tow truck and waiting, tossing a knife to see if anyone would try him on the street. 

No one did. Cowards.

He got into a fight with a dealer that night, one of Klaus’. The guy tried to get him to settle Klaus’ debts. 

Walking away he couldn’t shake the feeling he was being watched. 

 

March 18th 

He was definitely being watched. The man was wearing a trench coat. Diego could barely believe it. He doubled back, but lost the guy. It was like he vanished. He only ever saw him in his peripheral vision, or glimpsed in a windowpane. 

He changed his patterns. Took an unusual route home from the shop after picking up his car. 

He still felt like he was being watched. 

 

March 19th 

Four guys came at him with baseball bats while he was patrolling the docks. They weren’t Khernov’s or Stefano’s men. They were part of the drug ring Donnie had flipped on. None of them looked like the man in the trench coat. 

Patch offered him coffee when she found him lying on her porch. 

“This is getting out of hand, Diego,” she told him.

Diego said nothing, but winced when he swallowed. His ribs hurt. He’d have to rest for a couple of days. He had the fight with Rosetti coming up. He couldn’t back out; it was part of his agreement with Al. His landlord needed someone who could reliably go a few rounds before falling over and being that body paid his rent. 

(Not that he would back out anyway. He never backed away from a fight). 

“You look tired,” Patch said. She didn’t say, come inside. She didn’t say, stay the night. 

He told himself he wasn’t disappointed, checking his mirrors every ten seconds for a tail. He thought he saw the man in the trench coat standing under a streetlight just outside Al’s. There and gone in the blink of an eye. 

Just like the invisible man. 

 

March 21st 

The consiglieri of the Vizzini family was watching his fight. 

Diego almost took a straight K.O. when he spotted Douglas Montefiore packed into Al’s with two of his bodyguards. He spent the rest of the fight twitching, awareness stretched out of the ring waiting for a gunshot. 

He lost the fight in the sixth round. Al was not happy. He’d wanted eight. 

(Diego wasn’t exactly skipping and picking daisies). 

Montefiore had left a present for Diego in his room. A manila envelope inside with a date (April 4th), a time, a location and a hand written note. {Mr Hargreeves, my employer is an admirer of your work. He has a proposition for you. Come alone to the above location at the given time. My Employer will assure your safety.} 

Diego searched every corner of his room for hidden surprises, and spent the rest of the night checking the rest of the gym. Everything was clean. Whatever Giacomo’s right-hand man wanted, it wasn’t to kill him. He called Ortega. 

(Looked like he was still on the ropes). 

 

March 22nd

“We want you to go to the meeting,” Ortega said. “Giacomo has got to be concerned his son is making side deals without his permission. If the Don wants to throw his son to the wolves, we won’t stop him.” 

“Why me?” Diego asked. 

Ortega shrugged, “They don’t know you’re a cop. They must think you can be bought.” 

Peters nodded, “The enemy of my enemy, and all that.” 

“You should find somewhere else to stay until then,” Ortega added. “Now we know the Vizzinis’ know where you live.” 

That night Diego got a tip from a street contact about the series of home invasions over in Cherry Acres. Apparently some guy who worked for the security company managing the gated community had decided to moonlight in burglary. He was hitting a house tonight. 

Diego caught the man’s crew in the act and the family tied up in the sitting room. 

“Your family is safe now,” he told the terrified middle aged guy who gurgled at him behind his gag. 

He was all set to untie the family but first he went to check the den. The TV was on. He could hear the announcer’s soft voice droning. He didn’t register the words until he saw the picture. 

(Holy Shit.) 

He was half a block away before he remembered that he’d forgotten to untie the family. His hands shook on the steering wheel. The pulse in his throat was so strong he could feel it rattle up his jaw. His head ached. 

Dad was dead. The monster was gone. 

He’d have to go back.


	6. Chapter Five: Snapshots of a Family at the End of the World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everything is awful (including Diego) until it isn't.

Luther: He made you a monster

Ben’s statue in pieces at his feet, Diego pulls a blade with exaggerated slowness. He rolls his shoulders, stretches his neck. Luther keeps his back to him and that’s what makes the decision for him. He doesn’t know if the dart of adrenaline that shots through his bloodstream is anger (Luther doesn’t perceive him as a threat) or worry (what the hell happened to him?) 

It doesn’t matter. He draws blood. Sees the flash of shock and fear in Luther’s eyes and drinks it in as his due. Yes brother, remember me? Remember the years and years of blood and bruises between us? Remember the war I couldn’t win and the victory that cost you a life outside these walls?

He expects reprisal. He expects Luther to come at him like he means it, not just meaty fists pin-wheeling through the air like an amateur, but precision strikes designed to pulverise his insides and drop him with one blow. He expects to see Luther’s dull, flaccid features come to life with something bloodthirsty, the same siren song he can feel singing in his brain. 

It’s what they were raised to do, Sir Reginald’s Number One and Number Two. They weren’t the most powerful, or the most terrifying, but they were the ones built for violence, reared to it. 

They were the Academy’s attack dogs. Yeah, Number One was the pedigree pooch and he was the mongrel, but they’d been given the same training, the same instruction. Fight. Kill. Drop the enemy fast and hard. Eliminate all weakness in oneself and each other. 

Now Luther was the walking wounded, moving wrong in his own body, looking like Frankenstein’s monster, if Frankenstein had made him while blind drunk, and every hackle in Diego’s body was up on end. 

He saw weakness in the way Luther clutched his arm and barely avoided running away even with his long strides. He saw pain in the way Number One could no longer throw a punch with accuracy, the way he’d staggered forward without finesse in their fight, his footwork slow and dragging, every move telegraphed. 

Diego saw it, felt it in his bones, and he went for blood. 

He didn’t even know why. Didn’t understand what switch triggered in his brain, where the little voice came from that screamed “wrong” and “kill”. There was no team anymore; Number One was no longer the benchmark to surpass. He was no longer the thing Diego wanted to be but knew he could never be. He and Luther were no longer caught in a rigged game, but it seemed like, back inside these walls, surrounded by memories, Diego couldn’t quit playing. 

(It frightens him that Luther has forgotten the steps of their old dance. Christ –what had that the old man done to his brother?)

It’s afterward, in the Argyle library, hunting Five that Diego looks at Luther and pities him. 

He’s never thought of Luther as weak before now. He’d never thought of him as broken, the way Klaus is broken. He’s never seen him as needing protection, the way he wishes he’d thought to protect Ben. 

But Dad did break Luther, broke him and threw him away in disgust and Diego doesn’t know how to deal with this new reality, where he’s the lucky one. The winner because he got away. 

For the first time it occurs to him that being runner up, Number Two, is the reason he escaped at all. Had he been Dad’s favourite, he might have stayed, like Luther did. 

(And round the edges of his awareness, things start to alter, like the ground is shifting under his feet.) 

Diego can’t stand pity. He knows he’d rather be hated than pitied, so he pays Luther the same respect. 

 

Grace: It’s going to be okay Mom.

Her flesh gives way like paper under the run of his knife and she doesn’t notice. Oil coats the wires and cables, slicking his fingers as he peels back the layers. He keeps waiting for a reaction, some sign that she isn’t what Luther thinks she is, a machine, something broken that can’t be fixed. 

He needs her to scream, to fight; to be a person. 

His ears are still ringing from the gunfire and his head aches from smashing into that asshole’s mask, but he can’t take his eyes off her face, can’t pull up and stop what is happening, even though he knows the choice is ultimately his. 

He searches her eyes, watches for any flicker of expression, hunts for the evidence of life. 

He feels out of his depth. Like he’s drowning. His lungs are leaden but his heart is a jackhammer. Panic claws up his throat along with it a skin crawling sense of wrongness he has to end before he goes mad. 

“It’s g-going to b-be okay…M-mom.” 

Her attention snaps to him, fully, for the first time. She smiles, suddenly attentive. “Remember what we talked about? Picture the words in your mind,” she tells him. 

And that’s when he sees it, evidence of the person he knows she is and it’s that more than her blankness - more than the cross stitch stitched into her hand – that makes him do it. There is something terribly wrong with his mom. 

He curls his fingers around a thicket of wires that glow bright blue and crackle against his skin. He holds his mom’s life between his fingers. 

(It hurts). 

Words choke him and his heart lodges in his throat, huge and heavy, pulse pounding through his veins and roaring in his ears, but his hands are steady; his fingers don’t tremble as he inserts a blade like a scalpel and cuts Grace off. 

“Di…ehhhhhhh…goooooooo…Re—mem--ber….”

He loves her so much. This woman who was the only bright spot in a miserable childhood. But he doesn’t stop. He watches the lights go out. 

(It hurts).

He has her oil-blood on his hands and it feels like the bottom has just fallen out of his world.

 

Klaus: What about you, Stoner Boy

This is not the Klaus he knows. 

He’s too quiet. Too sad. Diego isn’t dumb. He knows Klaus is never really happy. His whole life is a cry for help no one can answer. He’s an addict. He’s broken. He’s riddled with weakness and he probably has a death wish. But he usually works harder to fake it. 

Something has happened and Diego needs to know what it is. That’s why he follows his brother into the Vet bar, why he tries to stop a fight and get Klaus out of there before someone calls the cops or worse, wipes the floor with his idiot brother. 

It’s scary seeing Klaus when he isn’t pretending. 

“I lost someone. Okay? I lost someone,” Klaus yells and it’s shocking, because it’s real in a way Klaus isn’t. 

Because Klaus doesn’t have someone, or anyone, he has a conveyor belt of dealers, casual hook-ups and marks he bilks for his next fix. 

But it’s like the Earth has tilted off its axis since Five dropped out of a hole in the sky and kicked off a bunch of shit. Nothing makes sense anymore and his world has a hole in it, draining away all Diego’s certainty.

Nothing is the way he thinks it should be and he doesn’t know how to deal with this new reality where Klaus is picking fights and yelling at him, actually fighting back instead of deflecting and lying like he has for their entire lives. Or where Allison has lost her confidence along with her kid. Where Luther is in hiding from himself and where Five is alive and dropping bodies.

“At least when you lose someone, you can see them whenever you want,” Diego hears his own voice as if from a great distance. He doesn’t really know what he’s saying, but it feels important that he say something before this new (real) Klaus disappears. 

Getting shot comes as a relief. It’s a pain he can deal with. Chasing after the psychos who attacked the Academy feels normal, a part of life that still works the way it should. 

As Wagner blares from the ice cream van’s speakers and Klaus grips the wheel like a condemned man, Diego roars: “faster, go faster,” because if there is one thing he knows – and only one thing – it’s how to rush headlong into a fight.

And if the stirring of nausea in his gut isn’t just from the GSW, it’s still easy enough to ignore the sensation that the world as he knows it is imploding. 

 

Allison: Good luck with your next movie. Hope it works out better than your marriage

When they were fifteen, the Umbrella Academy was invited to a fancy charity gala at the Governor’s mansion. They’d all been fitted for tuxes and, in Allison’s case, a purple silk dress. Allison being Allison, decided to make a production of walking down the stairs in her dress like a royal bride. She’d wanted everyone to watch her.

Diego had decided he’d help Allison put on a real show. 

He’d laid in wait until Allison was about to descend the main stairs in her ugly dress and thrown a single slim blade, catching the flowing train of the skirt and pinning it to the top step just as Allison made it to the third. She was moving fast and the stitching at the seams was weak. The dress tore right off her, leaving his sister screaming in her underwear on the stairs. 

Luther had blushed to the roots of his hair unable to take his eyes off Allison’s bikini briefs. Klaus had collapsed on the entranceway floor in hysterics. Vanya’s eyes had bulged wide. Ben had buried his face in his book. Pogo had blustered. Grace had tutted and rushed to Allison. Their father hadn’t been there, which was why Diego had felt safe pranking his sister.

Allison had turned, rage in her wet eyes as her lips formed four simple words. Diego had felt the blood freeze in his veins as he’d realised his mistake. 

(He’d forgotten his sister was the alpha predator in the house). 

“I heard a rumour….”

The next thing he knew was pain. 

He’d looked down to see one of his blades stuck in the meat of his thigh, blood soaking through his tuxedo trousers. His hand was still curled around the handle.   
His leg had buckled and he’d gasped as he landed on his ass on the landing, tears dazzling him. His heartbeat had been very loud in his ears. 

He’d looked up and seen triumph morph into guilt in his sister’s eyes. 

(He and Allison have always been the same. They don’t realise the damage they do, until they break something they don’t know how to fix.)

Neither of them made the gala that night. 

Allison had sat with him, holding his hand while Mom stitched his leg. She didn’t say a word when he cried. When he passed out, unable to bear the sensation of surgical thread pulling on his flesh, Allison sat with him the entire time. 

That’s what he remembers, seeing Allison choking on her own blood on the cabin floor. 

Luther carries her to the car. They lay her out across their laps as Five guns the engine. Luther is hyperventilating. Diego can’t look away from the way the streetlights reflect in Allison’s eyes, which roll wildly, looking every way, as her mouth gasps soundless at the air. He holds her hand, squeezes tight all the way home. 

He passes out at the sight of the needle in Mom’s hand.

When he wakes up with an I.V in the back of his hand and blood slurping through a tube he looks around in panic. 

“Did she make it?” he asks Pogo. 

The old chimp smiles, his entire face creasing with the effort. “Yes, Master Diego.” 

The relief he feels makes him lightheaded. He doesn’t cry, or if he does, Pogo doesn’t mention it. 

 

Vanya: She doesn’t get a vote

He stares and he stares. Vanya beats her tiny fists against the porthole glass. He sees her mouth open and close around silent screams. She jumps up and down. She sobs. He can’t hear any of it. 

There is a refrain of “No, no, no,” hammering through his mind, and a chorus of “that’s my sister,” and it makes him a hypocrite. It makes him a terrible brother because he never knew. 

He thought Vanya was ordinary and protected, exempted from all Dad’s bullshit. He’d thought it was okay to hate her because she was the one Dad never hurt. The selfish one who never knew how lucky she was.

He’d been an idiot. 

Klaus is arguing with Luther who keeps telling them their sister is dangerous, that she hurt Allison and Dad built a cage for her when they were children and now she has to stay there, because the least of them is suddenly the worst of them and Diego doesn’t know what to do. 

His whole world is in pieces. Nothing makes sense because everything he thought he knew he really didn’t. 

“No,” he hears himself say, panic making him shout, “Even if you’re right. That’s our sister. She needs our help. And we can’t do that if she’s in a cage.” 

The pieces of his world are in flux, he can’t make them come together in this new reality, where Dad is an even bigger monster than he ever imagined. Where Klaus is the voice of reason and Vanya has powers but is still powerless and Allison is crippled but fighting. Luther is -–Luther is dead fucking wrong -- but Diego no longer knows what is right. 

(He hasn’t been this scared since Ben died.) 

There’s a voice in his head that says, ‘A leader would step up. A leader would know what to do.’

(Diego doesn’t know what to do.)

The house comes down. He watches Mom die a second time. He still doesn’t know what to do. 

Five says they have to take Vanya out. He says there’s no other way.

“Bullshit. There’s always another way,” Diego insists but he doesn’t know what it is. 

(He’s not a leader.)

He gives way to Luther, he follows his lead willingly because Luther steps up, makes the call even if Diego knows it’s the wrong one in his gut. 

(And what does that say about him, that when it counts, he folds and gives in like he was raised to do?) 

The world is ending and his sister hates them all and he doesn’t know how to fix it, but he knows how to fight. He always knows how to fight. He’s Sir Reginald’s second best attack dog. 

 

Five: If I didn’t know what a prick he was, I’d think he looked adorable

Vanya is cradled in Allison’s arms out cold, because Allison chose their sister and screwed the entire world in the process and all Diego can think is he wishes he’d had the guts to do that. The moon is in pieces and they’re seconds away from death when Five speaks.

“I can fix this,” he says, “but you have to trust me.”

Hard pass. 

Five presses because the little prick has never known when to quit. He starts talking about time travel, all of them jumping back to before they screwed everything up. The sky is on fire. Diego decides hitting rewind is the first good idea he’s heard all day. 

“What’s the worst that can happen?” He shrugs when Five won’t shut up. 

“You’re looking at it,” Five sneers, holding his skinny boyish arms out at his side. “Getting trapped in your thirteen year old body.” 

Diego doesn’t relish having to relive his teenage years but he doesn’t see how that’s worse than being vaporised. His siblings, including Ben (holy shit) agree. 

The world ends in fire, but Diego and his siblings aren’t there to see it. 

So when he wakes up in the Academy in his twenty-nine year old body with a time travel hangover and the dull echo of someone screaming in his ears, he’s mostly just confused. 

Until he sees his brother Ben standing by the wet bar, fully solid and completely alive, staring in open mouthed shock as Klaus muffles his cries behind cupped hands. That’s when Diego thinks he either needs to punch Five in the face for screwing up time travel yet again, or congratulate him on a job well done. 

Because there are seven of them in the main room and the Academy is still standing, they're all adults (except Five and frankly Diego can’t imagine him as anything other than thirteen anyway) and when Diego checks his watch face it tells him it is two a.m. April 2nd. 

And now Diego has a whole new reality to contend with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you may have noticed an important missing entry in Diego's catalogue of woes. Yes, that's right. Patch lives! 
> 
> I thought hard about how Diego being an undercover cop might alter things between the two of them and decided that Patch would assume the attack on the Academy was the mafia coming for Diego, so when she found the message on the van, she called it in and didn't contact Diego (she was worried what he'd do, as she already thinks he's dancing too close to the edge). 
> 
> She and Beaman go to the motel, and having backup saves Patch's life. Beaman is shot by Cha-Cha but survives. Patch is distracted helping her partner which allows Hazel to escape. And the rest is history.


	7. Chapter Six: From This Day Forth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which declarations are forgotten, no one understands how timelines work, and Diego is rudely reminded that avoiding the apocalypse is no guarantee of survival when even strangers you've never met want you dead.

April 2nd 2019 (Very Early In The Morning)

“Uh,” Luther cleared his throat once the room had quieted down and everyone had had their chance to hug Ben. “Does anyone know what happened?” 

Allison, still mute, shock her head. Klaus shrugged eloquently. Diego stared without blinking, holding very still while he tried to process. 

“I’m alive,” Ben said hitting a tone somewhere between statement and question. He looked over at Five. 

They all looked at Five, because if anyone knew what was going on, it was Five. 

(Privately, Diego thought it was more accurate to say that Five was just very good at bullshitting. He still maintained that Five being thirteen made no sense, no matter what his brother said about it.)

Five ground his teeth, “Typical. None of you morons remember anything, do you?” 

“I remember,” Vanya said. 

All eyes swung to her and instead of flinching back Vanya sat straighter on the couch, lifting her chin. 

“We spent six months jumping through time, once we stopped being thirteen again, I mean,” she turned doleful eyes on Five, “that was awful.”

“At least you’re not stuck like it,” he shot back. 

“The Commission came after us,” Vanya continued, hiding a smile, “so we had to steal briefcases and jump again and again, until Five could find the briefcase with coordinates to get us to the Commission’s headquarters,” she explained. 

“Why don’t we remember any of it?” Luther asked and for once Diego was pleased the big ape was around so he didn’t have to ask the obvious questions.

“Because we left you behind when we went to the Commission,” Five said irritably. “Vanya threatened to destroy them all unless they agreed to reset time with some minor adjustments.” He sneered, “The new Handler was more reasonable than the last.”

“Minor adjustments?” Ben sounded angry, his fists clenching at his sides. Diego watched him, wondering if the black leather jacket, hoodie and dark jeans were a timeline thing or a dead thing. 

Five looked up at Ben and for a moment he looked his physical age. He swallowed before speaking. “What’s one extra life among seven billion?” he asked trying for casual and failing. 

Without a word Ben walked out of the room. 

“Eh, leave him,” Klaus flapped his hand when Diego made to go after him (it was difficult to watch him disappear). “He’s always doing that. At least he didn’t try and go through the wall.” Klaus tilted his head back over the couch and yelled, “You hear that Benny? No more dramatic ghost antics for you. Oh no, you have to use doors like the rest of us.” 

There was no response. The only sound was Allison’s ballpoint racing over her notepad. She flipped it so everyone could see. 

[Why did you leave us behind?]

“We had to,” Vanya said turning so she could look Allison in the eye, her small pale face earnest. “Five did the calculations. You four died in both time lines’ apocalypse,” Vanya dropped her gaze, going quiet for a moment before continuing. 

“You became part of the fixed time locus. Making jumps got harder and harder the further Five pulled you from the apocalypse, so we jumped back to our time and left you here, but before – uhm---“ 

“Before the moon went ka-boom?” Klaus prompted, gracefully glossing over whose fault it was that the moon went to pieces. Vanya nodded gratefully. 

“A fixed time locus? How is that possible?” Luther demanded, sounding frustrated. He dropped his arms to swing at his sides. 

(Vanya was not the only Hargreeves sibling to tense up.) 

“It’s simple,” Five snapped. “I was mistaken when I said Howard Jenkins was the catalyst. He was just the fuel. You four were the catalyst that sent Vanya over the edge in both timelines.”

Diego’s head was spinning but there was one thing he was clear on. He wasn’t going to let the little prick pin the end of the world on them alone. They all had a part of that. 

“You were there too, man,” he said. “It was your idea to go after Vanya.” 

Five averted his eyes. Vanya sighed. 

“Five wasn’t around in the first timeline. He never died, so he wasn’t stuck,” she explained. She glanced at Five and then met Diego’s eyes boldly. “We all screwed up,” she told him, “but now we have a second chance. Doesn’t that count for something?” 

This time Diego looked away, tension bleeding out of his shoulders. 

Allison held out her notepad. [Are we safe?] 

Five pursed his lips. “The commission has agreed that Vanya is no longer the cause of the apocalypse,” he said carefully.

“Wait, does that mean there’s still an apocalypse?” Luther asked. 

Diego looked over at Five sharply. He wasn’t the only one. 

“No, no,” Klaus groaned, “again?” 

Five pinched the bridge of his nose. “The wording in the contract specifically said that Vanya was no longer the cause, and that all effects of the Vanyapocalypse would be erased from the timeline.” He glared at everyone in the room. “I didn’t choose the name,” he added before anyone could say anything. 

“But,” Luther protested, “if there’s a chance the apocalypse could still happen, shouldn’t we—

“I can’t fix everything, Luther,” Five snapped. “The future is unknown. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

“Well, at least we have one, right?” Klaus looked from face to face and shrugged. 

“He’s right,” Diego said nodding at Klaus and then looking up at Luther. “What’s the matter big boy, pissed you didn’t get to lead the mission this time? Or are you scared you’ll fail Dad again next time?” 

“Don’t,” Vanya said voice low but clear. “You promised you wouldn’t pick fights with Luther anymore.”

“The hell I did!” Diego was half out of his seat. 

Vanya reached into her back pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. “Here.” 

Warily Diego took the paper and unfolded it. His own handwriting – spiky cursive hoops and whirls, the handwriting of a child taught by a robot programmed by an old English peer – stood out against the white background and faint blue lines. 

[I, Diego Hargreeves, do solemnly swear that from this day forth I will refrain from the following:  
Using aggression to cover up my true feelings  
Inciting conflict with any of my siblings as a way of covering up my true feelings  
Attempting to provoke and/or alienate my siblings as an attempt to cover up my true feelings and/or defensiveness derived from my crappy childhood  
I, Diego Hargreeves, do solemnly swear that from this day forth I will endeavour to:  
Communicate my needs and feelings in a calm and honest way, while recognising the needs and feelings of my siblings.] 

“This is bullshit,” throwing the paper down like it burned him Diego stared at Vanya, fury threatening to throttle him as it bottlenecked in his oesophagus. 

Vanya stared him down with the eerie confidence of someone who knew they were the most powerful in the room. She actually smiled. “It’s okay,” she told him gently, “we all wrote one. You can read mine, if you want.” 

He snatched the note from her before he could think better of it. (Nothing good ever came of reading anything Vanya wrote.)

[I, Vanya Hargreeves, do solemnly swear that from this day forth I will refrain from the following:  
Destroying all life on Earth  
Fratricide (and/or sibling maiming)  
Blaming my siblings for our father’s abuse in tell-all autobiographies  
I, Vanya Hargreeves, do solemnly swear that from this day forth I will endeavour to:  
Communicate my needs and feelings in a calm and honest way, while recognising the needs and feelings of my siblings.]

While Diego read Vanya's declaration, Klaus had snatched up his note from the table. He plucked Vanya’s declaration out of Diego’s slackening grip and scanned it quickly. 

“This is just like rehab,” he cooed dreamily. “Do we have group sessions too?” 

“Um, well,” Vanya bit her lip, “we actually did do that. It was…interesting. But, uh, positive?” 

Diego sat down heavily on the couch and put his head in his hands. He didn’t know whether he was glad or not that he didn’t remember any of it. Part of him felt he’d only believe it if he could remember doing it and another part of him felt that it would probably be worse than the time he was in Walmart with Patch and a blue rinse granny in rollers and pink slippers asked him why he didn’t strip anymore. 

He scowled at Five. “None of what you said explains why we don’t remember,” he pointed out. “Time travel didn’t give you amnesia.” 

Five looked bored, sitting back in the chair. “You don’t remember because you, like the other seven billion people on this planet, are now existing in an altered timeline, one that was reconstituted from the previous timeline but with selective edits to account for Ben’s existence, while erasing the events at the bowling alley and the Icarus.”

Identical blank looks and resounding silence suggested the explanation was lacking. Five threw up his hands in abject disgust. 

“I can’t believe you still aren’t getting this,” he muttered. “Your timeline ended when we made the first time jump and restarted when you woke up just now. Hence, none of the rest of it ever happened for any of you.”

Diego shook his head. “That makes no sense.” He snatched his declaration from Klaus’ hands. “This is my handwriting. How can this exist if I wasn’t there?”

“Because it still happened for me and Vanya, who remained outside of the timeline while it was restarted,” Five ground out between his teeth. “Do you need me to explain this to you with flashcards? Or maybe shadow puppets? What would be more your speed?” 

“Five,” Vanya warned him, waving a neatly folded declaration in the air. Five subsided. 

Ben walked back into the room with a half-eaten sugar cookie in his hand. “Do I have a life I don’t remember?” he asked Five around a mouthful of cookie. He either ignored or didn't notice how Diego, Luther, Vanya and Allison all jumped out of their skins upon seeing and hearing him and then relaxed simultaneously. 

Five looked shifty. “I don’t know.” 

“What do you mean you don’t know? How can you not know?” 

“I didn’t script the timeline Ben,” Five said, “and no one in the typing pool would speak with me. It's not like the grenade was aimed at them," he added in a dark undertone. 

“What does that mean—“ 

“Where’d you get the cookie?” Diego asked staring at the pink and white frosting like the fate of the world rested on the delicate sugar work. 

“Mom,” Ben said. 

(Mom!)

Diego was off like a shot. 

“Now Diego, what have I told you about running in the hallways?” Grace tutted at him, deftly pivoting out of the way and holding the loaded plate of cookies above her head. 

“M-Mom.” He grasped her shoulders. This was the second time she’d come back to life and he needed to be sure. He set the plate on the oriental incidental table with the cranes on it and turned over her wrist. The uneven stitching was still there, evidence of what he’d done to her. 

“Are you O-okay M-Mom?” 

Grace’s smile softened into something genuine. She tapped his cheek gently with her free hand. “Of course I am, dear. What a silly question. Why wouldn’t I be?” 

Diego did not say, because the last time I saw you the house fell on you. He already felt like nothing was quite real and the words flew away from him when he tried to line them up to hit the verbal target. 

“As you children are all having a slumber party in the parlour I thought I’d make cookies,” she said smiling brightly and gently detaching her wrist from his grip so she could pick up the plate. 

“Mom,” pulling himself together he stared into her lucent eyes, “Ben’s alive.” 

Grace chuckled, “Well I know that, the naughty scamp stole a cookie!” 

“How long has Ben been alive?” 

“Well, all his life of course! Really now, what a question!” 

Diego swallowed, “He died, Mom. Don’t you remember?” 

Grace lost her smile. She set the plate down. “Are you feeling alright, dear?” she asked him worriedly. “Do you have a fever?”

Diego backed away. He needed air. He needed something that still seemed normal. He felt like his entire life had been unpicked at the seams. 

“Diego?!” Grace called after him but he didn’t stop.

His booted feet crunched over the gravel as he ran for his car. He drove way above the speed limit to reach Al’s, but at the early hour the traffic was thin. 

He moved through the gym with none of his usual caution. He didn’t check any of his regular precautionary measures. (He didn’t notice the trip wire was broken on his door). He hit the lights and scanned his room, taking the stairs quickly. 

Movements frantic he moved to his workbench where he kept his spare knives. His skin was crawling like there was someone in the room with him. His usual array of knives wasn’t enough. 

The soft scuff of a shoe on the poured concrete floor had him whirling around, knife drawn. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck was standing on end. Every instinct he had screamed that he wasn’t alone. His power crackled, extra sensory awareness warning him a split second before an invisible fist struck him across the jaw. 

Diego staggered into the bench, reeling from the shock more than the blow. He threw a knife on instinct, but without a target to aim at he had nowhere to the send the blade. It struck the far wall and clattered into the basin of the sink. 

An invisible kick struck his knee, dropping him to the floor. Diego whirled and stabbed as he fell. He struck something solid he couldn’t see. 

“Sonofa—“ 

A man appeared, flickering to life like a mirage in front of his eyes. He was wearing a beige trench coat, dark slacks, wingtips and a fedora. He hobbled backwards, reaching down to grasp his shin. 

“You know I was going to drag this out a bit –enjoy the novelty of fighting another miracle baby like me,” the man said anger lighting his pale features, “but now I’m just gonna—“ he whipped a Baretta out from under his coat. 

Diego let a knife fly. The man howled as it impaled his hand. Diego burst upward, lunging forward and propelling both of them onto his narrow bed.


	8. Chapter Seven: Two, Six, Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which buildings explode and POV is shared.

April 2nd (still)

Number Two:

Diego struck the crown of his head against the wall as he grappled with the invisible man. His opponent ripped the knife from his hand and thrust for Diego’s ribs. He weaselled away, the blade scoring a line of fire across his ribs instead of sliding between them.

The man leapt up, grasping his bleeding hand. He was panting, thin mousey hair falling across his brow. He swept up the Baretta and hat he’d dropped but wasted time cramming his fedora back on his head. 

Diego twisted on his back on the bed and kicked out double footed. The Baretta flipped out of the man’s hands high into the air. Diego whipped out a knife and in the split second it took to draw, his opponent disappeared. Diego threw anyway. 

He felt the air part around the blade, the drag pulling on his mind as he propelled the blade forward toward the column supporting his shaving mirror and fight posters. He felt the impact in his mind, that sense of something snagging on his blade as he propelled it forward. 

All the air left the invisible man’s lungs in a rush as he slammed into the column, spine connecting awkwardly with the edge of the sink as the blade tore open the meat of his arm on its way home. 

It wasn’t a perfect bullseye; he’d meant to punch the blade right under his opponent’s clavicle, in that sweet spot between the cage of the ribs and the vulnerable soft tissue. Instead he’d opened up his upper arm, possibly severed some tendons, but the man was still mobile. 

Mobile and swearing a blue streak. “Fuck you, man. This coat was my favourite.” Right arm hanging limply, he grasped his shoulder with his left. He was bleeding like a stuck pig from his hand and upper arm, blood saturating the sleeve of his trench coat. 

Diego snapped open one of his butterfly knives. The man flickered out of sight. Diego threw the blade in an arc, sending it zipping around the column and up the stairs to the exit. The invisible man howled again as the blade struck him in the upper left thigh (at least that was where Diego had been aiming). 

Diego was already up the stairs to the gym. He hit the lights. The invisible man left a starburst trail of blood spatter on the floor (Diego cursed. Al was going to be pissed.) 

There was a clatter at the doors. Diego threw two thin blades, pinning the door closed. 

The man flashed visible again. Diego had time to register the barrel of a gaudy silver handgun turned his way before he was diving and ducking behind the ring in the middle of the gym. He heard the door slam shut. 

He was just behind the man, reaching the curb and scanning the street. 

His opponent was on the opposite sidewalk, standing under the sodium light of a streetlamp. Covered in blood and listing to the side he waved something in his one good hand, depressing a button with his thumb. 

“Shi---“ 

Diego charged across the street as the man vanished. Vaulting over the hood of his car, he hit the sidewalk as the explosion rent the air. Rolling under the car Diego covered his head with his hands and squeezed his eyes closed, kissing asphalt. 

Heat and sound and thunderous vibration seared his skin, blanked his mind and shuddered through his bones. He thought he was dead for several stunned minutes. Large pieces of debris rained down on the roof of his car. Several vehicle alarms screamed and the acrid scent of smoke and gasoline burned up his nose. 

Crawling out from under the car he surveyed the damage. Al’s was gone. The top had been blown off the building and what was left was on fire. The fire had spread to the pawn broker’s next door and the initial explosion had taken out several of the cars parked out front. Broken bricks and pieces of burning insulation littered the street. Diego’s car had several impressive dents in it, the tires on the roadside were shredded. 

Doors up and down the street opened, people spilling out in pyjamas and slippers. Grasping his bleeding side Diego bolted down the alley between Vikram’s dry cleaners and Chickie’s Lip Smackin’ Burgers. 

 

Number Six: 

He couldn’t deal with everyone looking at him. It was like those naked dreams, everyone looking and looking and feeling so completely exposed. 

He’d been dead for over a decade. And now he wasn’t. No, actually, it was worse than that. He’d never died at all in this timeline. He remembered thirteen years of un-life that had never happened. He remembered dying in an erased timeline, but he couldn’t remember the life he’d supposedly lived in this one.

It was terrifying. 

All the years he’d haunted Klaus, vicariously living through his screw up brother because the alternative was – well, he didn’t know what the alternative was - still, all that time, watching but not interacting hadn’t prepared him for the horror of living. 

Death was easy. Living felt like having his skin flayed off over and over again every time someone looked at him. And Ben should know, he was a master of body horror. 

(He was the Horror, perpetually horrified by life). 

At first it was just weird. Uncomfortable because he wasn’t used to being, well, alive, but not terrible. He’d hugged Mom and eaten a cookie and drank orange juice. The sensation of having a form, being squishy and bony, hard and soft, hot blooded but prone to cold feet – it all flooded back and left him reeling. 

(He’d wondered if this was what it felt like to be high). 

But then he’d come down and panic had set in with reality. 

He’d gone looking for Dad’s copy of Extra Ordinary, trying to find out what was different this time around. The first time, Vanya had gone easy on him; he’d been the macguffin of the story, the catalyst for the family’s final collapse. He had never been a real person in Vanya’s memoirs, and when she did reminisce it was with awkward pathos for the “one who died”. 

Tearing through Dad’s library he’d hoped for scathing criticism of his life choices, so he could piece together the clues of who he was and what he’d done with the life he didn’t remember. 

Had he gone to college? Did he have a job? Was he as much of a screw up as the rest of his siblings? 

(Did he hang out with Klaus or had he ditched him in life the way he never could in death?) 

He hadn’t found anything. Apparently this go round Vanya hadn’t written her book. 

“Maybe we can ask Mom?” Vanya had suggested in her quiet voice when she’d found him in the wreckage of the library. 

“What happened?” he asked. “Why didn’t you write the book this time?” 

She’d shrugged with a delicate wince. The book would always be a sore subject, even when it no longer existed. “I don’t know. It’s not like any of us really lived this timeline’s past.”

“So what? Are we just possessing the bodies of our alternates? Did I kill alternate Ben when I woke up in his body?” 

Vanya’s eyes had widened. “I’ll put on a pot of coffee,” she offered, “And we can ask Five.” 

Ben hadn’t taken her up on the offer. He’d never liked coffee when he was alive and it wasn’t like any single answer would help. He’d been resurrected against his will and knowledge and while he knew it was pretty stupid to resent this second chance, it didn’t stop him feeling it. 

He couldn’t really explain it. 

Resentment was an old friend when he was dead. Why wouldn’t it be? He was dead and forced to watch Klaus flail his way through one disaster after another, squandering his life and refusing to address his issues. How many times had he wanted to punch Klaus bloody before he finally connected (and even then it was because Klaus made it happen)? Ben was used to feeling powerless. He was used to existing without purpose, drifting through unlife with no hope. 

But that was how it was supposed to be when you were dead. 

Being a ghost sucked, and he’d had it better than most, retaining his sense of self and managing to will his ghost body into aging alongside Klaus (because there was being dead and then there was being dead and eternally sixteen). Feeling powerless and nihilistic was what ghosts were supposed to do. 

Now he was alive and pissed and he couldn’t figure out why. So he was lurking on the back stair hoping for a few minutes alone to get his head together. 

He was disappointed immediately. Heavy footsteps pounded the narrow stair. Ben stood very still, forgetting that he was alive now and blocking the way. Diego rounded the turn in the stair. 

His brother had always had expressive eyes. Big and round, they bugged out of his face when he saw Ben. 

In the thirteen years of his unlife Ben had seen Diego often enough to become familiar with his adult brother’s masochistic need to pick fights with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Why should surviving the apocalypse and getting a second chance on life slow his groove in any way? Ben wasn’t shocked to see bruises on his face, or a growing wet patch over his sweater that could only be blood, but he was disappointed. 

“Couldn’t you start your day with a nice jog in the park, or a swim, you know something normal, instead of…” he looked him up and down, “whatever beat the shit out of you this time.” 

It figured that one of his idiot ‘even’ brothers would do something stupid to christen the new timeline. Ben was just glad it wasn’t Klaus (Yet. The day was still young).

“You should see Mom,” he said. “Get yourself checked out.” 

“What?” Diego asked, loudly. 

Ben frowned. “Why are you shouting?” He came closer. “And why do you smell like a tire fire?” 

Diego smacked the side of his head. “I can’t hear you man,” he said, still too loudly, “Shit. I need to change.” 

Ben grabbed his arm as he made to push upstairs. They were both surprised. Touch! Ben had just barely grasped the concept of ghost corporeality and now he had full haptic feedback. He dropped Diego’s arm quickly, but this close he could see the scratches covering his neck and face. Tiny pieces of glass glittered, embedded in the weave of his sweater. 

“What did you do?” he asked. 

(Baited a bear? Thrown himself through a plate glass window? Taken up fire walking? All three at once?) 

Diego grasped his arms, making Ben squirm inside. “You never saw me,” he enunciated clearly (and loudly). 

“That’s my line,” Ben blurted and immediately wished himself dead again, because really?! 

Thankfully Diego couldn’t hear him. “I need to go away for a few days man, but you never saw me, okay?” He clapped Ben’s shoulders and then to his consternation, hugged him. Ben could smell sweat and blood and feel the tremors of fading adrenaline coursing through his body. 

“I missed you bro,” Diego told him.

Refraining from pointing out that even when he was dead he’d never actually gone anywhere, Ben asked, “What kind of trouble are you in?” 

Diego used the hug to pivot them, so he could slide past and up the stairs ahead of Ben. Ben hurried after him only to bounce off Diego’s closed bedroom door. (Stupid corporeality). He stared at the closed door for a moment and then hammered his fist on the wood experimentally. 

Diego didn’t answer and when he rattled the handle the door wouldn’t budge. 

“Damn it.” Stepping away from the door Ben looked around. Sighing he did what he’d been doing over and over again for the last thirteen years. 

He went to Klaus. 

 

Number Four:

Inchoate cry on his lips Klaus hurled the dogtags across his room and pounded the bedstead with his fists before burying his head in his hands. It wasn’t working. He was sober, more sober than he remembered being ever but he couldn’t do it. 

He couldn’t summon Dave. 

Contrary to popular opinion, Klaus actually had a finely tuned sense of his bodily rhythms; staying perpetually high enough to block out the ghosts but still functional required an innate understanding of his limits and tolerances. He knew there was something off with him. 

He was too clean. Too sober. Too…blah. 

He felt beige. 

Yeah, that was it. He felt like off-white walls in rehab, bland to the point of stupor, calm to the point of catatonia, so stable he was bored with himself on an existential level. 

He hadn’t seen a ghost this morning. Not that there were ghosts in Casa Hargreeves, but they always found him, given enough time. He’d been sober and boringly lucid for hours now and still everything was all clear on the ghost front. 

In fact, Klaus’ morning had been bizarre because it had been, dare he say, normal in the extreme. He’d had smiley face pancakes and bacon for breakfast, washed down with orange juice to please Ben (who hadn’t shown up, the little bastard). He’d conversed pleasantly with Vanya (who was suddenly little miss self-actualised) and then gone out to the courtyard and searched for a roll up in his pockets. All he found was a pack of gum and a bottle of unnamed pills.

Out of habit he’d popped a couple of the pills (the label did say ‘take as needed’ and Klaus needed to avoid sober reflection at all times). Sadly, the pills did nothing for him. 

The most excitement he’d had was a brief PTSD flashback while strolling along the hallway to his bedroom. Luther was listening to Whiter Shade of Pale and the sixties melody seeped through his closed door. 

Once he was done cowering in the hallway, the whomp-whomp of chopper blades blurring back into the trauma wallpaper of his mind, Klaus had felt inspired to summon Dave. 

He still had the tattoos and the dogtags (he’d checked as soon as he realised this wasn’t their original timeline) so this version of him had time travelled too and surely, no version of him could ever resist Dave Katz. As he was stupefyingly sober right now everything should have gone off smoothly. 

(He should have been awash in the angry dead). 

His door popped open and Ben burst in without knocking. 

Klaus scowled. “I didn’t summon you. You’re not even dead anymore.” 

“We need to follow Diego,” Ben said without preamble. 

Odd, but promising. Klaus cocked his head. “And why do I need to do that?” he asked. 

“I think someone tried to blow him up.” 

“And?” Klaus swallowed back a yawn. 

“Just get up Klaus,” Ben shook his head in disgust and ducked back out of the room. 

Klaus drifted after him. 

Diego’s room was a step or so from his own. The door was open. Their violence inclined brother was not in residence. In fact it looked like he’d left in a hurry, bed spread lifted and rug disturbed as if he’d pulled something out from under the bed. He’d left a sweater on the floor and there were a bundle of bloodied cloth wadded up in the wastebasket. The window was open. 

“Come on, quick,” Ben said. 

“Hold your horses Nancy Drew,” Klaus drawled. “Since when do you care what Diego does?”

“Since I came back to life and realised I’m bored already.” 

“Oh, in that case--” Klaus began only to be cut off by the shocking sound of the old fashioned door chime ringing through the air. 

Klaus startled violently. Wide-eyed he stared at Ben. No one ever, ever rang the front door bell. 

“Who could that be?”


	9. The Hargreeves Siblings Discover Shenanigans Afoot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Luther is puzzled and Five is on the case

April 2nd (It’s going to be a long day):

Luther pulled up the needle when he heard the doorbell, cutting Bonnie Tyler off in the middle of her hunt for a hero. They never had visitors. Careful not to wrench the door off the hinges Luther lumbered down the hall, bounding down the main stairs just as Grace sashayed toward the front door.

“I’ll get it.” 

“Wait—“ 

Luther wasn’t fast enough to stop her. He hurried to the door, looming behind Grace who smiled brightly in welcome. 

“May I help you?” 

“I’m detective Patch,” the harassed looking woman in the doorway held up a badge hanging from a chain around her neck. “I’m looking for Diego Hargreeves.” 

From somewhere behind Luther, Klaus gasped, loudly. “Lady Cop.” 

Luther turned around and as he did so he moved enough to give the woman in the doorway her first view of the gathered Hargreeves. 

“You!” Side-stepping Grace the detective moved quickly, advancing on Klaus. “You were in that motel room.”

Luther body blocked her before she could get to Klaus, who had backed up rapidly, exchanging a loaded look with Ben, who managed to appear annoyed and intrigued at once. 

The detective looked all the way up at him without fear. “Touch me and you’ll regret it,” she told him, open disdain in her expression. “You must be Luther.” 

Luther’s brow scrunched, the way she said his name… he was sure they’d never met but it already sounded like she hated him. 

“Do you have a warrant?” he asked. Police needed warrants before they could do anything right? 

The detective stared at him. “Do I need one?” 

“Oh, my,” Grace exclaimed. “Where are my manners? Would you like some tea, Detective?” Grace’s heels clicked on the marble floor. “Luther, dear. Please tell your brother he has a visitor. Detective, perhaps you’d like to wait in the main room?” 

Tension bled out of the detective’s frame all at once. “He’s here?” She sounded relieved, which was ironic because knowing she was here for Diego just made Luther even more concerned. Although he didn’t know why he should be, after Klaus, Diego was the most likely to end up in trouble with the law. 

“No,” Ben said, “he left a few minutes ago.” 

Like a hawk the detective was on Ben, managing to slide around Luther with ease. “When did he leave? Did he say where he was going?” 

Luther exchanged a loaded look with Allison, who was waiting in the doorway to the main room with Vanya and Five. 

Luther said, “You need to tell us what’s going on. How do you know Diego?”

The detective scowled. “At around three thirty this morning there was an explosion at Al’s gym. Nearly took the whole block with it. Diego’s car was found at the scene and witnesses saw a man matching his description run from the blast.”

Luther looked to his siblings. Allison looked as shocked as he felt. Five was frowning heavily. Vanya’s eyes were wide. Klaus and Ben shared complicit glances. Damn it, those two knew something. 

The detective knew it too. She folded her arms across her chest. “Look, you are already wanted in connection with an open case,” she said looking Klaus up and down, “my partner was shot in that motel room and we still haven’t found the shooters. You fled the scene of a crime. I should arrest you right now and drag you down town.” 

Klaus opened his mouth. The detective put up her hand, effectively silencing him. 

“Forget it.” She shook her head in disgust but whether at herself or Klaus or the situation Luther couldn’t tell. “Just answer one question. Were the shooters Khernov’s?” 

Klaus shot a panicked look around the room, hoping for support. “Uh, no?” 

“Who is Khernov?” Five demanded striding into the hall. 

“Which one are you?” The detective shot back, nonplussed to see an aggressive thirteen year old in knee socks marching at her, fists swinging. 

“You don’t need to know that,” Five dismissed the question. “You came here looking for Diego without an arrest warrant, you’re willing to overlook Klaus’ involvement in an active investigation. That means you’re not here officially and we don’t have to cooperate.”

The detective pressed her lips together. “I could get a warrant,” she threatened. 

“You said, ‘which one are you’,” Vanya said surprising everyone by speaking up, including herself. 

“What?” 

Vanya pushed away from the safety of the doorway. “You didn’t ask who Five was, you asked, which one he was. You know about us, don’t you?” 

The detective’s eyes had shot back to Five when Vanya had named him. Surprise and then suspicion sharpened her features before she focused on Vanya. 

“I’ve read your book,” she said darkly her tone making Vanya flinch. 

Who was this woman? She clearly didn’t approve of him or Vanya. 

“You didn’t learn about us from Vanya’s book,” Five said shrewdly. “Diego told you about us. How well do you know Diego?”

The detective rolled her eyes. “Every cop knows Diego,” she said neatly evading the question. “Look,” she said again, “did he take his case?” 

“His case?” Luther asked.

“Titanium briefcase,” she explained tiredly, “Where he stashes his best knives. I need to know what level of idiocy I’m dealing with here.” 

“I don’t know. He locked his door,” Ben said with a shrug when all eyes turned to him. 

The detective rubbed the middle of her forehead, eyes closed. Luther was surprised. He often felt the way the detective looked when dealing with Number Two. Five was right. She knew him and yet wasn’t trying to arrest him. Which made no sense. Diego didn’t have friends and he definitely didn’t have police friends. Did he? 

“You need to tell us what’s really going on,” he insisted. “If Diego is in trouble—“ 

“Are you involved in this?” The detective cut him off looking around at the others. “Damn it, he was supposed to lay low, not recruit you into this mess.” 

Luther stared. Five’s fists clenched tighter. Allison bent her head to her notepad. Vanya shifted on her feet. What mess? They were hours from averting the end of the world. How could Diego have gotten himself in trouble so quickly? Luther shock his head. Stupid question. Diego probably blew up Al’s himself because he didn’t think he was getting enough attention. He was as bad as Klaus in his own way. 

“I’m not telling you anything,” the detective said briskly. She glared at all of them, focusing on Ben, as the last one to see Diego. “Tell Diego to keep his head down, okay? It’s not a request, it’s an order. We do not need the city exploding in a gang war.” 

She pivoted on her heel, turning for the door. Luther caught her arm but released her quickly when she grabbed for her sidearm with her free hand. 

“Tell us what’s going on,” he said, “We can help.” 

The detective’s eyes widened. “Two of you running around is more than enough,” she said confusing Luther, “this city doesn’t need the Umbrella Academy back, screwing up police operations.” 

Backing away from him with her hand resting close to her holster the detective moved to the door, which Grace held open for her. 

“Thank you for coming,” she said polite but muddled. 

The instant the door closed behind the detective Allison crossed the room and held up her notepad so everyone could read the bolded and underlined sentence. 

[What the Fuck?!] 

Luther winced. “Does anyone know who Khernov is?” he asked. 

No one did. He nodded, pleased that he wasn’t the only one in the dark. 

“Right. Five jump into Diego’s room and see if the briefcase is in there. If the detective asked about it, it must be important.” 

He waited for the flash of liquid blue light before addressing the rest of his siblings. “Diego is in trouble, we need to find him.” 

Allison looked unhappy. She scribbled on her notepad. [I need to get back to Claire.]

Luther sighed. Allison had asked him to speak to Claire for her as soon as it was a decent hour. She’d already booked her ticket back to L.A. and Luther knew he shouldn’t take it personally, that it was inevitable that Allison would leave again, but it still stung. He knew how important her daughter was to her. He understood that the longer she stayed away the easier it would be for Patrick to convince a judge to deny Allison her petition for joint custody, once her mandated therapy sessions were over, but…

“Allison. We need to stick together. As family.” 

[Claire is my family.]

Five jumped back into the foyer, saving Luther was saying something stupid, or having to deal with the sting of rejection. He had the briefcase. Looking keenly between Luther and Allison, he rolled his eyes. 

“Your flight doesn’t leave until tomorrow,” he told Allison somehow immediately knowing what was going on. 

[I just don’t know how much more of this I can take.]

“If there’s a new threat out there, we need to know what it is,” Luther pressed, seizing on the potential of a new mission. He looked around at the others. “What if this is the Commission again? They left the possibility of another apocalypse on the table.” 

“It hasn’t been twenty four hours since the last one – by your time, at least,” Five scoffed. 

“Are we going to open the case?” Klaus asked looking and sounding excited at the prospect of raiding someone else’s property. 

“I already did,” Five said. He set the case down and held up a key. “Found in the lining. This must be what the detective wanted.” 

“But, how would—“ 

“It’s obvious,” Five cut him off. “The detective is clearly involved with Diego.” Klaus opened his mouth. Five spoke over him. “Not like that. Didn’t you hear what she said? She passed on an order to stand down. She didn’t ask any questions about Diego’s movements, or interrogate any of us about the explosion. She dropped the name Khernov.” 

Five waited. No one said anything. 

“Are you really this dense?” Five demanded infuriated. “Do I have to keep spelling this out? The detective didn’t come here looking for information. She came here to deliver it. She was sending a coded message.” 

“To Diego?” Allison squawked so outraged she risked her vocal cords and immediately descended into violent gagging. Grace rushed forward.

“Now Allison, what did I say about using your voice?” 

“What was the message?” Luther was sceptical. Diego was the last person he’d try to send a coded message to as well. Diego and subtext did not mix well. Diego and plain text wasn’t a sure thing either. 

Five waved off the question. “We need to find out what this key opens. Find that and we find Diego.” 

“Let me see,” Vanya took the key from him. “It has something stamped on it. CP 019. Does anyone know what that means?” 

Klaus tentatively put up his hand. 

“Klaus,” Luther warned. 

“No, no, I know what it is,” Klaus insisted pouting. “Come on big guy, you promised not to be a condescending asshole, remember?” 

Luther opened his mouth. Every looked at him. He closed his mouth. Shuffled his feet. “I wasn’t…” 

“What’s the key for, Klaus?” Five asked cutting in irritably. 

Klaus preened. “Claude Pierre Storage. I had a unit there once. Surprisingly comfortable, but then someone objected when I had a little unit warming party and,” he shrugged a ‘what can you do’ gesture.

“You lived in a storage unit.” Luther stared. 

“You lived on the moon,” Klaus shot back. 

Five snatched the key from Vanya and jumped, the bright flare of light momentarily blinding them. 

Luther sighed. “Come on. We’ll take Dad’s car.” 

 

Five jumped out of the house and waited behind the wheel of Dad’s car. He didn’t actually know where Claude Pierre Storage was, but he knew none of his siblings were smart enough to remember that he couldn’t jump without a clear location in mind. He’d done it to force them to move, knowing that if he didn’t they’d be mired in endless bickering. 

He was feeling pretty smug, all things considered, until he felt the press of a gun barrel to the back of his right ear. 

“No sudden moves. Start the engine, little man,” a male voice murmured menacingly. 

Five looked into the wing mirror and saw nothing. 

“Invisibility, huh?” he smirked. “Interesting power.” 

“Thank you,” the invisible man said, “but flattery won’t save you from a bullet. Take me to your brother. He and I have a score to settle.” 

Now that he was paying attention Five could smell blood and sweat on the air. His smirk widened. He took a (metaphorical) stab in the dark. 

“How much is Khernov paying you to kill my brother?” he asked. 

“Five hundred thousand, if you can believe it. Didn’t think a jumped up thug was worth the effort, even if he does have powers, but now. Now I’m going for hazard pay.” 

Five jumped out of the car. Rematerializing at the back door, he wrenched it open. His siblings piled out of the house into the yard.

“Shit!” The invisible man exclaimed. 

Five jumped as a bullet scored the air, exploding an empty terracotta pot pressed up against the far wall. He dropped onto the gravel beside Luther, who stood body shielding the rest of his siblings. 

“What—?” 

“Invisibility. We need to take him alive.” 

Five jumped again, landing in a crouch on top of the car. He heard someone drop out of the car onto the gravel, rough breathing speaking of pain and exertion. Gravel shifted as the invisible man tried to escape. Five guestimated and dropped onto his back. 

The man cried out, falling flat to the gravel. He became visible as Luther rounded the car. Five scoped up the gun, noting the man’s thickly bandaged hand and the blood stains on his coat sleeves. Evidently Diego had acquitted himself adequately, which was good to know but never certain. His brother might have preternatural aim, but his idiocy worked against him. 

Five was at heart, a creature possessed of a thin veneer of corrosive sarcasm painted over a festering stew of survival instinct and the merciless training of a Commission assassin. He had the gun pressed to the base of the invisible man’s skull before he knew it. He pried his own finger off the trigger scrambling off the man. 

“Get rope. We need to question him.” 

“Where are you going?” Klaus asked.

“To find Diego.” 

He jumped. 

He still didn’t know where the storage unit was, but it didn’t matter. He was on a hunt now and he knew his quarry. Clearly, Diego had fought with the invisible man at the gym, something had happened to cause the explosion. Diego had come back here to lick his wounds, encountered Ben, and if Five was going to give a guess, panicked when confronted with his back from the dead brother and decided to hide out away from the rest of them. 

Still Five knew Diego, he wouldn’t stay hiding long. Patience and forethought were never his forte. That’s why his detective lady-friend had tried to head him off. She must think Diego had a fair chance of finding the person who sent the invisible man after him. 

Five hailed a taxi on the street and gave the cabbie the address. He smiled, a sharp anticipatory smile. 

He’d been worried that with the apocalypse averted, his siblings alive and his objectives fulfilled, there would be nothing to stop him falling into the crevasse of despair and buried memories he carried inside him – and no, Dolores, he was not being melodramatic - he’d survived forty plus years in a barren world and now had to face the trauma of a functional planet while experiencing puberty again. He was entirely justified in his fears. And yes, he knew Dolores wasn’t technically here, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still talk to her. She was with him in spirit, just like she always had been. 

Thinking furiously Five watched the ordinary people scuttling about on the sidewalk as he settled in the back seat. 

He had never enjoyed killing. The ends-justify-means ruthlessness of his existence taxed him and always had. He was a realist living in (several) ugly realities and he’d adapted, but that didn’t mean he liked it. On the other hand, before he’d been the Commission’s hired gun he’d been part of the Umbrella Academy and whether due to nostalgia or something far worse, Five had loved those days. His memories of their missions were of their successes, the acclaim and the brief camaraderie, something he had secretly longed for during his time in the apocalypse. 

And while it might be true that Five didn’t relish the prospect of killing, Diego’s detective lady-friend had given him an idea.   
He needed to find out the true scope of this new threat from Diego, but...


	10. Chapter Nine: Escalating the Situation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Diego continues to shun doors in favour of smashing windows. Five schemes and Vanya is badass.

2nd April

Diego:

Time is a funny thing; some say it isn’t real. Others that it is inescapable. A few will tell you time is a mutable force, adaptable and subject to alteration. Five Hargreeves, if he was so inclined, might spit out equation after equation rendering the entire scope of time in algebraic gibberish scrawled across a wall. 

In this case, time worked like this. 

As Ben cajoled Klaus into action, Diego was climbing out of his window and shimmying down a drainpipe. As Detective Patch pulled up in her unmarked car, took a deep breath and steeled herself to ring the bell, Diego was dusting himself off by the dumpsters before cutting across the street, making a bee-line for his storage unit. 

He was still in the unit, disinfecting his cuts and grazes, rooting out clean clothes from one of the boxes, while his siblings subdued the invisible man in the courtyard.

Here’s where it gets interesting, because here’s where choice and time intersect. 

Had Five Hargreeves had a better understanding of where the storage unit was, had he jumped to a nearby location instead of taking a leisurely cab ride, he would have caught Diego still in the unit. 

Had Diego listened to the small sensible voice in his head that told him to call in and get orders from Ortega, he would have still been in the storage depot when Patch arrived at the office in an attempt to head him off before he did something monumentally stupid. 

But that’s not what happened. 

Diego left the unit with an address in mind, cuts hastily bandaged and bruises blooming, ignored, across his ribs. A dark denim jacket zipped up over his bristling knife rig. He was walking with wide, swift strides away from the depot as Five found unit 019 and his siblings back at the academy argued over what to do with the invisible man. 

Diego was on a mission. He had no plan, no real clue, but what he lacked in sense and forethought he made up for in pure, bile driven rage. 

Nerves jangled by his encounter with the invisible man, on top of the whole end-of-the-world, not-end-of-the-world thing he didn’t remember for some reason he was never going to understand, Diego needed to restore his equilibrium. 

He knew only one way to do that. 

Diving headfirst through the large plate glass window of Salieri’s Cigar Bar. 

The glass was bulletproof, but not Diego proof. He found a cracked and broken wheel rim lying in the gutter. The jagged edges were sharp as glass, but it still retained enough of its round shape to catch air underneath it, helping it fly smoothly across the road, underneath a passing bus to hit the window. Diego pushed with his mind, visualising the projectile crashing through the glass and embedding in the back of one of the wing chairs arranged around the wood enamelled men’s club. 

He started running, bounding over the road, and vaulting over the hood of a stalled yellow cab. He threw himself into the spider cracked glass. Landing in a roll, he pulled knives from his belt as he came to a stop on one knee on thickly embossed green carpet. 

(There were other ways he could’ve handled this. Diego wasn’t an idiot. He did know that. But it was theory of motor redundancy all over again. Why take the subtle – quote-un-quote, sensible – route when smashing through a window knives out works just fine?

Diego was a firm believer that doing something was always better than waiting and doing nothing. Life was about living and living was motion. Constant motion. He could be still when he was dead and if he died right now, well, at least he went out living.)

The safeties on a dozen semi-automatic handguns clicked around the room, large men in suits and shades leapt up from overstuffed Victorian inspired armchairs, kicking over antique coffee tables for cover. 

Diego dove behind the armchair he’d impaled with the wheel rim as the air ripped with gunfire. 

Stefano Vizzini crawled on his hands and knees toward the exit, covered by Big Bruno, the enforcer he stole from his brother. Thin and reedy, Stefano has a long pock marked face, slicked back oily black hair and the beady eyes of an anxious rat. He squeaks when a knife spins through the air, curves just past his nose and embeds itself in the doorframe, quivering in place at eye level. 

Big Bruno, who is big, tough and excels in intimidation, peppers the room with indiscriminate gunfire, forcing his own men to duck and cover. 

Diego, who is fast and tough and excels in reckless stupidity, throws a brace of blades. One hits Big Bruno in the thigh, dropping him, the other pins Stefano to the carpet through a fold of his pant leg. 

Diego vaults toward Stefano as the other mobsters are picking themselves up from the floor. There are two doors, wide open frames large enough to drive a van through. One leads toward the entranceway and the other deeper into the building. More large armed men appear from the direction of the entrance. Diego catches one in the neck with a butterfly knife and grabs Stefano. 

“Don’t shoot, you morons!” the Don’s youngest son cries, waving his arms around. Diego has one arm hooked around his neck and a knife pressed against his ribs on the left side. 

He hauls Stefano backwards, watching the room. Big Bruno was on the ground, putting pressure on his leg. The other dark suited made men hesitate, looking at one another, as if reluctant to go after their boss.

(It was an open secret that Stefano was the least favoured Vizzini child. He was slimy and dishonourable. The men who worked for him did so as much due to fear as loyalty to the Vizzini family. No one was loyal to Stefano himself. The men in Salieri’s individually and collectively decide that a crazed super-powered freak busting through the window is above their paygrade. And, after all, Stefano told ‘em not to shoot. So, what’s a guy to do?)

Dragging Stefano through the kitchen, Diego slammed the door to the pantry and hurled Stefano toward the shelves. The weasel staggered but regained his balance quickly whipping out a nine mil. 

Diego grabbed his head before he could aim and slammed his knee into Stefano’s nose. It popped wetly. Stefano dropped dazedly to the floor. 

Shoving a food cart in front of the door, Diego kicked Stefano’s gun under the shelves and crouched down in front of him.

“Tell me the name of the guy who attacked me.”

“You’re crazy,” Stefano’s nose bubbled, his voice thick and filled with blood and mucus, “I don’t…” 

Diego grabbed him by the shoulder, cocked his fist. 

“I don’t know! Andre told me he’d handle it!” 

The rolodex inside Diego's brain flicked through entries. Andre Posca, the man who attacked him outside the sex shop. Part of Khernov’s gang. 

“Where do I find him?” 

“Russian tea house on 63rd,” Stefano sputtered. 

Diego stood up. There were plastic cords binding some of the boxed foods. He looped the cords and used them to bind Stefano at his wrists and ankles. 

“I’ll fucking kill you!” Spitting blood, Stefano Vizzini wriggled across the floor. Diego thought about pinning him to the lino but didn’t want to waste any of his knives. He kicked Stefano in the head. That shut him up. 

He listened, heard nothing through the door, so cracked it open. The wail of police sirens filtered through the kitchen from the street outside. There was a crash from the entranceway and a voice yelled, “Police! Put your hands up!”

Shit.

He found a staircase leading to the second floor, slipped open a window and used the fire escape to cross to the next building over. Jimmying open the window he ignored Rodriguez’s shout from below him.

“Hargreeves, c'mon man, get down from there!” 

He climbed into the second floor office of a small charitable concern fund raising for free veterinarian treatment for the pets of the underprivileged. The workers gaped at him as he strode passed, jaw set and eyes dead ahead. He paused briefly at the threshold to drop ten dollars on the desk.

“Uh, for the cause.” 

He was just fast enough out of the door to catch the officers by surprise. Greene and Rodriguez burst, panting, around the side of the building as Diego ran across the street and down an alleyway. 

 

Vanya:

Vanya was not part of her siblings heated discussion about whether tying up someone who was invisible was an effective tactic. She’d fallen into old habits of silently observing (and maybe judging) her siblings from the back. 

“Look, he’s invisible not intangible,” Luther said, repeating himself for, Vanya thought, maybe the third time, “even if we can’t see him, he’ll still be tied up.”

“But how will we know that if we can’t see him?” Klaus exclaimed, thoroughly rattled that after a lifetime of seeing people everyone else couldn’t, there was actually someone (a living someone) he couldn’t see. 

“Because there won’t be any slack in the rope, Klaus,” Ben raised his voice a little to be heard from the back of the room where he stood with Vanya – the other lonely observer in the family. 

Klaus spun around, eyes wide and then clapped. “Oh, yeah.” 

“Allison, uh, I don’t suppose…” Luther cleared his throat, “Can you rumour him?” 

Allison glared, not even bothering to write anything on her pad. Vanya looked down at her shoes, focusing on the pattern on the rug. There was a good chance Allison had lost her power for good, but even if she hadn’t, after what happened, she probably wouldn’t want to use her power on another person with powers. 

“Screw you,” the invisible man yelled, visibly angry as he wriggled in his bonds. “I’ll never talk!” His defiance rang a discordant note in the air. 

It was kind of funny, Vanya thought, she’d so badly wanted to have powers for so long, even knowing how having powers had ruined her siblings, and now she had them. She’d gone from the weakest to the most powerful; she’d blown up the world. She could do unbelievable and terrible things with a single thrumming note on the air. And she knew that she should be humble, she should be thinking about the danger of getting what you wish for and all of that, but she wasn’t.

She was excited. 

When Five had used her as his leverage against the Commission she hadn’t really had to do anything but make the room shake and dangle black suited assassins upside down. But it had still been fun; too much fun. She’d relished the knowledge that everyone was paying attention to her, riveted to her next move. It was better than any performance she’d ever given. Better than the applause she’d never received for being First Chair. And it had been over too soon. 

Vanya had always wanted to be a superhero, to be noticed, to be revered as her siblings were when they were kids. She knew now that she’d missed things from her position on the outside. She hadn’t really grasped the ugliness at the heart of Dad’s attention. She’d seen but hadn’t understood, how having powers had warped each of her siblings, or how Dad had hurt them. 

Now she understood. Now she knew there was always another side to every story. 

She knew that Klaus would have traded places with her in a heartbeat when they were kids, if it meant he never had to use his powers. She knew that Ben had died because he was loyal, even when he was reluctant, and nothing she had endured was worse than death. She knew Allison had destroyed everything she loved because Dad had used her powers without scruples and Allison had followed his example. Five had lost his entire world because he pushed his powers too far, too fast. Luther had been subjected to mutation and exploitation because the only thing Dad had really valued about him was his strength and his obedience. Diego had been conditioned to see violence as his only solution, he was the proverbial hammer in a world of nails. 

And yes, knowing that she had the power to obliterate billions put things into perspective. Made her quiet life of music lessons and auditions seem not so bad. And she knew that she should want that simple life back (without the involuntary power suppressants). She knew that a good person would be afraid to use her powers after what she’d done. To Allison. To the world. 

She knew. She understood. It just didn’t change anything. 

Vanya wasn’t afraid. She still wanted to be powerful. To step up. To get her turn in the limelight. 

Her eyes bled white. Through the pathway her siblings hastily cleared for her, she walked toward the invisible man as his chair rose from the ground and his shouts echoed unnaturally in the suddenly charged atmosphere. 

Vanya smiled. “I can make you talk.” 

The ropes snapped. The chair fell to the floor in pieces. The invisible man hung in mid-air, as a column of light sprouted from his chest connected to Vanya’s hand. His face twisted in fear and then pain as Vanya began to siphon the life out of him. Desperate, the invisible man winked out of sight.

“I can hear your heartbeat,” Vanya told him. 

Her siblings were staring at her. Klaus looked vaguely sickened. Luther stricken, as if he wanted to stop her and knew he couldn’t. Allison had a hand to her throat, mouthing the word ‘Don’t.’ Ben was the only one brave enough to step forward. 

“Vanya,” he warned. “Don’t do this.” 

“Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.” The invisible man rematerialized. “I’ll talk! I’ll talk! I don’t want to die!”

With perfect control, Vanya set him back down on the floor, where he promptly collapsed in a living puddle amid the debris. 

Vanya faced her siblings and cocked an eyebrow, silently issuing a challenge she knew none of them would take up. 

Vanya had been good her whole life, she’d tried to be kind, and she would find a way to forgive and forget one day, but the truth was, after a lifetime of being ignored, disregarded, abused and lied to, being feared felt a lot like coming alive. 

 

Five:

There are many advantages to being prodigiously smart and snide putdowns delivered in haughty deadpan were the least of it. It took Five very little time rooting around in his brother’s filing cabinets to undercover the entire truth of his undercover life. He was almost impressed. Diego had managed to find a way to have his cake and eat it. He would commend his cleverness except he was ninety-nine percent certain Diego had fallen into this by accident and the entire thing was the result of someone else’s cunning. 

It took maybe five minutes skim reading the files to ascertain that Diego was investigating a possible collusion between the local Outfit and an international smuggling syndicate. It took less than that to realise the underlying truth. The city PD were using Diego in exactly the same way they had used the Umbrella Academy in their youth, hiding behind a super-powered stalking horse and their carefully constructed plausible deniability. 

They had a vigilante on the payroll and no one knew. If – and Five knew this was in fact more like when – Diego screwed up and went too far (because he never knew when to stop) the PD would leave him high and dry to take the blame. What Five couldn’t work out was whether Diego knew this. His brother was a dumbass; he was also an idealist doing a terrible job of playing cynic. He might know and not care. This was something Five would have to fix.

Tucking away a list of names and addresses related to the Vizzini/Khernov investigation, Five exited the unit and materialised right in front of Detective Patch.

“Holy shit!” Drawing her gun only to hastily holster it, the detective stared at him. 

Surprisingly, Diego was something of a diarist. His investigation notes were refreshingly thorough and detailed, suggesting that while a dumbass Diego could, with time and effort, put two and two together correctly. More than that, he kept detailed records of his encounters with a man called Ortega (his handler, Five surmised, and yes he’d be paying him a visit. He had a bad history with handlers, after all). He also wrote extensively about one, Detective Eudora Patch. 

It was painfully obvious that Diego adored this woman. She was, Five realised with some discomfort, his Dolores. His lighthouse in the dark. 

Five could use that. 

“Let’s go,” he said reaching for her hand. 

Eudora blinked at him. “Where?” 

“To discuss the matter of your ongoing mob investigation. Clearly the situation has developed beyond the PD’s ability to handle. You need the Umbrella Academy.” He grinned. “My family are idiots and our father is dead. I’ll be negotiating the Academy’s rates for taking down Khernov.” 

“What makes you think—“

“You’re an intelligent woman, detective,” Five interjected still smiling with the dead eyes of a shark. “At this very moment my brother is instigating a full scale gang war. Your department will come to terms with the Academy because I promise you, you do not want to cross me or my family.” 

 

Diego:

Diego stood outside the Russian tea house, flexing his fingers. He rocked onto the balls of his feet, took three deep breaths and pulled his longest and best knife from the harness sheath strapped over his heart. 

It was payback time.


	11. Chapter Ten: A New Player Enters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Five is always right, even if he doesn't know it yet.

April 2nd (Will this day never end?)

 

Vanya:

“My name’s Gary. Gary Gates. I’m from Idaho.” The invisible man stammered, squirming in Luther’s iron grip. 

Vanya tried not to think about the strength in her brother’s arms, or remember how it had felt when those arms had closed around her, tighter and tighter until all she could see, smell and taste was his aftershave and the rough texture of his coat. All she could hear was the thunder of her pulse. 

She jumped half out of her skin when Allison touched her elbow, causing the glass in two of the windows to sprout spider-web cracks. Allison’s eyes widened. (Are you okay?) she mouthed. Vanya nodded jerkily and stepped away, hugging herself to exorcise the memory of Luther’s suffocating grip. 

(She would forgive. She would forgive. It wasn’t like she didn’t have things to atone for as well.)

“Why did you attack us?” Luther demanded, focused on their house guest.

“I was looking for the other one, the one with the knives.”

“Why?” 

“Why do you think, monkey nuts? I took the contract on him.”

“Contract, you mean assassination?” 

“That’s exactly what I mean, brain trust. Jesus, are you really Luther Hargreeves?” Gary shook his head and clucked his tongue. “You used to be my favourite, man. I’m so disappointed right now. It’s like they always say, never meet your idols.” 

Luther looked stricken. He sought Allison’s eyes over Gary’s head. Allison tossed her hair in disgust and scribbled furiously. 

[Who is paying you to kill our brother?]

“Oooh, and how much?” Klaus chipped in. 

“Not enough. That bastard stabbed me,” Gary said sounding aggrieved. 

“You kill people,” Luther pointed out. 

“Yeah, but I just shoot ‘em quick. I don’t stick ‘em like I’m playing pin the tail on the donkey. Gary Gates is no one’s donkey.” 

Klaus turned, covered his mouth and stage-whispered to his sisters, “This guy is an idiot.” 

“I heard that, asshole!” 

Ben stepped forward. He asked, “You liked the Umbrella Academy?”

Gary eyed him warily. “Sure. You’re like me, part of the Miracle Forty-Three. And you were heroes, man. Celebrities. It’s all about representation, right? You guys inspired me to get into the wet work business.” He grinned. “You all were brutal.” 

“We were saving lives,” Luther objected loudly. 

“I wasn’t,” Ben said quietly but his voice still carried. Everyone stared at him as he stood in front of Gary. “I rip people limb from limb,” he said pleasantly. “Even after I died, I was still a killer.”

Gary nodded somewhat confused. “Tabloids called you the ‘horror’,” he offered in the way you try to appease the obviously unstable. 

Ben nodded, his face still and remote. “Stop wasting our time and answer the question, unless you want to see it up close. Who hired you?’ 

“Dino MacArthur.” 

Klaus barked a laugh, swallowing it when his siblings glared at him as one unit. He flapped his hand. “Dino? Really?”

“You wouldn’t be laughing if you knew him, buddy.” 

“Where do we find him?” Luther demanded, digging his fingers into Gary’s bad shoulder.

He paled and sucked in a sharp breath but shook his head. “No way. I’m not telling you that. It’s worth more than my life.” 

The siblings stared at one another. What he said had the ring of truth to it. Gary was more afraid of this Dino MacArthur than he was afraid of them. 

“Why does he want Diego dead?” Vanya asked. 

Gary sucked in air, his knees buckling and whole body shaking as he tried to sink away from Luther’s clawing grip. “He works for Dima Khernov – his main man in North America. His guy in the city – Andre something –called him, said your brother was giving him trouble and he wanted him eliminated. Khernov’s got this deal in the works with the Vizzini outfit, could give him exclusive access to the docks and most of the city’s distribution lines. He don’t want nothing getting in the way of that.”

Klaus and Ben exchanged confused looks. “That’s a lot of information for someone scared to talk.” Ben pointed out sceptically. 

“The cops already know,” Gary scoffed. “Everyone knows. Except you. Guess that’s what retirement does to you.” 

Luther shook him. “Does Diego know?” 

Gary squirmed, tears in his eyes. “If he doesn’t he soon will. There was a time limit on the hit. He needed to be whacked before the 4th. If I fail, Dino will come do it himself. We got word your brother was meeting with the Don. Could kibosh the whole deal if old man Vizzini talks to the cops.” 

“What are you talking about?” Luther spoke for the entire room. “Diego’s not a cop.” His grip loosened fractionally. 

Gary twisted so he could look up at Luther. Then he looked at the puzzled faces of the rest of Vanya’s siblings. A rictus grin scythed over his face. “And you called me an idiot.” 

Moving faster than a man in as much pain as he seemed to be should be able to, Gary hooked Luther’s left leg and drove his elbow hard into his solar plexus. The gut shot failed to penetrate through Luther’s thick muscle but the leg sweep caused him to stumble. The momentary loss of equilibrium was enough. 

Gary squirmed free, turned invisible, and darted for the room’s open doorway (they should have thought to draw the doors closed. What if Mom had come in?) Gary grabbed Klaus by the back of his fur lined jacket and hauled him toward the door as a human shield. 

Vanya reached for her power, but was still inexpert in its use. It took her precious seconds to open her senses, absorb all the sounds in the room, separate them out and calibrate on the lubba-dub-dub of the invisible man’s heartbeat. 

“I can snap his neck before you can off me,” his disembodied voice shouted. 

Klaus jerked his head back, connecting with Gary’s invisible forehead. Gary swore and shoved him forward releasing him. 

Vanya heard his footsteps skitter over the marble floor outside. She could strike him down, but she’d take out the sitting room, the adjoining room and bring the ceiling down on her siblings if she tried. 

Luther crashed into the hall, but he couldn’t see anything and his own lumbering footsteps drowned out the staccato echo of Gary’s feet as he ran for the front door. Luther lunged to slam the door closed, made a grab at empty air, and came up empty. 

An antique vase previously sitting on a pedestal near the grand staircase flew through the air. Luther threw up a meaty forearm to protect his head and ceramic shards exploded in all directions. 

“He’s gone,” Vanya said into the ringing silence that followed. 

Gary had run down the hall toward the kitchen, he’d be out through the courtyard passage before they could catch up. 

If only Five was here. 

 

Five:

It took precious time none of them had to convince the donut eating Neanderthals at the precinct to ignore his adolescent packaging and take him seriously. Fortunately Diego gave him an assist when reports began flooding in about a shootout at a downtown cigar bar and men’s club that was a known mafia front. Eye witness reports described a man in black leather crashing straight through a plate glass window. 

Sipping terrible precinct coffee Five glanced at Detective Patch over the rim of his waxed paper cup. She didn’t see him, her head was buried in her hands. 

“God, Diego. You idiot,” she muttered fiercely under her breath. 

Five stood up and strolled out into the main ballpen of the precinct. There was a lot of inefficient activity; the entire precinct coming alive like an ant nest doused in hot water. He smirked, sidling up to the Captain. 

“Where is my brother now?” 

The Captain stared down at him. Thin and strained, the man looked like he would dearly like to throw Five in the cells in place of his brother, but instead he bowed to the inevitable. He’d made a critical error when he’d decided to use a former Academy member as his stalking horse and now he had to accept Diego was a Trojan horse and Five and his siblings were the Greeks. It was only a matter of time before the Captain caved and agreed to Five’s plan. It would ultimately be in his interest, especially if the invisible man was only the beginning of a super powered invasion as Five suspected. 

(It never paid to assume best case scenario or believe in isolated incidents. Just because it turned out they weren’t out to get you the first time, didn’t mean they wouldn’t be sooner rather than later and that extra warning could be the difference between life and death. Five believed in assuming the worst and preparing for it. It wasn’t paranoia. It was pre-emptive defence. Kill your enemies before they know they are your enemies.) 

“Higgins,” the Captain bellowed across the room. “Do we have a bead on Hargreeves' movements?” 

“Greene and Rodriguez lost him running down Clydesdale Street. He hopped a fence behind a drycleaners headed west. That was twenty minutes ago. We’ve got BOLOs out for him across the city.” 

“Who are the players Captain; who would my brother target next?” Five reached into his pocket and extracted the list of names and suspects he’d lifted from his brother’s file and handed it to the Captain. “Who was in the cigar bar? Who was he after and did he find them?” 

Diego was like a self-guided missile, but one that needed to be pre-programmed with a list of targets before launch. If Diego was moving with intent it was because he was working off the same list Five had. The problem was, Five didn’t have a way of knowing which targets his brother would hit first. 

Five had very little interest in chasing down dead end leads or protecting Mafioso and street thugs from his brother’s temper. He was interested in finding the ringleaders, preferably before Diego went after a target too big for him. 

The Captain ignored him, snatching the paper and storming deeper into the ballpen. He started barking orders at his subordinates and Five scowled. He disliked the unprofessionalism, the obvious panic the man showed. It almost made him miss the Handler. Even when he’d blown her up she’d remained admirably self-controlled. Five had hated her for what she’d turned him into, but he really did loathe people who couldn’t keep themselves in check. 

(This was one of the biggest reasons he preferred Luther to Diego. There was really nothing much to distinguish Number One from Number Two in skill or deplorable lack of leadership acumen or strategic thinking, but at least One was of a more phlegmatic temperament. Forty odd years of complete isolation had left Five with a distinct lack of patience for loud hotheads, and Diego was definitely that.

Still he loved his brother and even admired the kernel of idealism that had driven Diego on his path. Five couldn’t care about the masses, they weren’t really real to him, but a small part of him wished he could believe in such small concepts as justice or even retribution.) 

“Andre Posca,” Detective Patch said, voice low as she came to stand beside him. She clutched her car keys in a tightly clenched fist. “He attacked Diego a few days ago.” 

“Where can we find him?” Five asked, correctly identifying the gleam in her eyes as reckless fire he could use. 

“Russian tea room on 65th.” 

“Is that near the Argyle Library?” 

Patch nodded. “Same block.” Five grabbed her hand. “What are you—“ 

He jumped them both out of the precinct. 

 

Diego:

While Gary Gates the Invisible Man was escaping his siblings inept supervision and Five was laying the groundwork for the revival of the Umbrella Academy as the city’s professional super hero squad (with an allocated budget, and a strict code of conduct agreed to by the D.A’s office in exchange for certain freedoms from prosecution in case of extreme property damage) Diego was getting himself into a world of trouble.

Khernov’s people were a lot more motivated than Stefano’s reluctant Made Men. Which is how Diego ended up running from a hail of gunfire and throwing himself into a dumbwaiter shaft in the old building, only to fall down a floor to the basement. 

He avoided breaking bones because the shaft was narrow and his body wedged several times on the way down. He struck his head on the lip of the opening as he crawled out into the basement. 

Blood welled above his right eye as he straightened up. Diego immediately checked his knife belt and thigh sheath. Broken bones healed, scars were sexy, but some of his knives were irreplaceable. They were custom order from a Japanese artisan who’d died five years ago. (Diego had mourned Aso Shigeru harder than he mourned Sir Reginald that was for sure). 

Limping across the basement Diego froze when he heard shouts coming through the door. 

“We got him. The bastards trapped in the basement!”

Diego scanned the room. No windows, no vents. The only way out was back up the dumbwaiter shaft. Diego shoved his head in and nearly lost it when one of the Khernov gang fired down the shaft at him. 

“Shit.” 

Diego pulled the long knife from his thigh sheath, well aware that he was running low on remaining knives. He backed up toward the far wall facing the door. Rolling his neck he prepared for a battle to the death. 

The door flew open and several armed men burst in, including Andre Posca. 

He grinned nastily. “Got you now.” 

Diego hauled back and hurled his knife straight at Posca. Or he meant to. His arm drew back, his body pivoted at the hip, his mind primed the trajectory, his power flowing down his arm to give the blade that extra propulsion through the air…but at the critical moment of release his arm abruptly dropped, as if all the nerves had died. His blade clattered from his fingers, which he could no longer feel. 

(What the hell?!)

Diego looked down at the blade in stunned confusion, grabbing his useless left arm. A painful tingling erupted over his flesh. He collapsed to his knees and then onto his face on the ground, unable to feel his legs. Heart hammering in his chest a creeping numbness seeped deeper into his tissue. Diego felt his lungs deflate, the air whistling out from between his slack lips. 

Limp as a dead fish Diego stared as a tall black man in a designer pinstriped suit entered the room. The strip lighting reflected sharply over his razor cheekbones as the man walked over and squatted down beside Diego. 

“So you’re Number Two, are you?” He spoke with an Australian accent. “Good on yer, mate, surviving Gary; he’s usually more reliable. You must be something, alright.”

The stranger lifted Diego’s head as he began to choke and convulse unable to inflate his lungs. 

“You’ll pass out in a second or two, but before you do, I should introduce meself. I’m Dino MacArthur,” he flashed a mouth full of perfect, blazing white teeth that Diego could only just see as his vision shattered into black and white dots, “but you can call me Number Eight. Or you could, if you weren't dying.”


	12. Chapter Eleven: Enter the Kraken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which water induces murder, who knew?

00:15am April 3rd

There are consequences to messing with timelines; sometimes big, more often small. It’s the little changes that make all the difference, just ask the guys and gals in the Commission typing pool. A swerve left instead of right and history is forever changed, wearing the red tie and not the blue, a butcher not washing his hands – little changes, big impacts.

Sometimes the changes aren’t about the choices we make, sometimes they’re about discoveries made and gone unnoticed. Sometimes it’s about potential met and unmet.

Let’s say, for instance, there is a child born under immaculate circumstances on October 1st 1989. A child bought by a man with a vested interest in that child’s potential as a weapon and a tool. Let’s say, for arguments sake, that man has a habit of placing medical monitoring devices on his wards (because the boy and his quasi-siblings are not and never will be children, in this man’s eyes).

Let’s say that one night the man notices that Number Two is not breathing, has in fact not taken a breath in at least a minute. A normal man would panic, he would call for assistance, he would rush to resuscitate. Sir Reginald Hargreeves takes notes. The next night he takes blood samples from the sleeping Number Two, waking him and beginning his crippling phobia of medical needles. The third night he takes x-rays. The forth he takes spinal fluid. The fifth he performs an endoscopic examine. 

Sir Reginald, scientist extraordinaire, makes some discoveries, notes down the biological adaptations, speculates on the possible implications and applications of said discoveries but eventually decides experimenting further would reap negligible gains and so drops the matter. He never shares his findings with the frightened and confused child trying to be brave while the man who is the only father he will ever know, stuffs a camera on a stick down his throat. 

In another timeline Hargreeves fails to notice Number Two’s peculiar case of sleep apnoea. There are no tests, no x-rays, no speculation and ultimately no dismissal of potential. 

Fast forward some twenty years odd years. 

In the timeline where Hargreeves did not notice, Number Seven obliterates the world, ending the timeline but not her siblings. In the interlude between the end of the world and the next, Five Hargreeves makes a deal. The Commission patch them into a “close enough” alternate timeline. 

That timeline just happens to be the one where Sir Reginald noticed and ran his midnight tests, and in doing so, added one more hairline crack in the flimsy façade of Diego’s sanity. This is important, because this is the first flap of the butterfly’s wings. The beginning of a brand new end. 

It starts like this…

Diego wakes up, very much not dead but still very much not breathing. 

He knows he’s not breathing. His lungs won’t inflate, they sit like stones down near his gut, his ribs pressed flat. His body is completely numb. He can’t even open his eyes as he’s picked up like a roll of carpet and flung into the trunk of a sedan.

His heart beat is very loud, but almost painfully slow. Thud-dum, Thud-dum, Thud-dum, and then slower still, Thud-dum….Thud-dum….Thud….dum….

But he doesn’t feel slow. 

His senses are primed; his brain is a livewire, sparking like it does when he uses his power. He wishes he could feel his fingers. He knows he could throw faster and harder and further than he ever has before. 

(Not that it would help much, stuck in the trunk.)

Diego tries to track the turns the car makes, guestimating the direction they’re travelling in. He can’t hear much from inside the trunk and everything is dark. He still isn’t breathing. Distantly Diego realises that he should be worried. Distantly he thinks of needles and pain, tied to a medical bed while Mom stroked his hair and Dad looked down his nose at him when he cried. 

(Thud-dum, Thud-dum. A trickle of rage picks up his heartrate. He doesn’t fully understand what he’s remembering. Strictly speaking these are not his memories, but the memories of the nearly identical Diego he replaced. Not that Diego grasps that. All he knows is he’s afraid of the stillness in his chest, afraid of the prospect of needles. 

And fear makes him angry. And he only knows one outlet for his anger.)

A little tingle of feeling starts to come back to his extremities, not enough to do anything when the car stops and he’s lifted out of the trunk, thrown on the ground, tastes the briny, oily polluted reek of the docks on his tongue, but it is enough to let him open his eyes. 

“Toss the body in the water,” the Aussie tells the men carrying him. “Back home I’d take him out on the harbour, feed ‘im to the sharks, but you Yanks like the old cement shoes thing, don’t you?” 

“Uh, we don’t have any cement,” Andre Posca admits sounding worried. 

“Tsk, and you call yourself a professional,” the Aussie laughs. “Find something to weight him down with, got t’ be something in one of the warehouses, and toss the body already. Time is money and I’ve gotta hunt down Gary. The little scrub failed, and he knows too much anyway.” 

Diego wants to fight. He really, really wants to fight. All he can manage is some angry blinking, which no one notices. It’s dark already and they think he’s dead. They’re not looking too closely. 

They tie him up with synthetic rope and broken bits of breeze block. Diego sneers. He has never been a Boy Scout but he still knows a lot about knots, (he’s been tied up a lot, okay?) and these are crappy knots. If he wasn’t still numb… 

Posca’s men toss him off the edge of a pier. 

He sinks like a stone. 

The water is very dark and very cold. Diego is battered and bruised, paralysed by the Aussie’s power. It’s at this point that his life should flash before his eyes. He should be repenting his bad choices, lamenting his missed opportunities. 

(The only thing that flashes before his eyes is the bright light of the headlamp Sir Reginald used when he stuck the camera down his throat. The ropes remind him of the restraints on the bed. The strange swoosh-hush of his descent becomes the hiss of an air vent sucking all the oxygen from the room while Hargreeves watches him from behind thick glass.)

Rage explodes inside him, flushing his system with heat. 

Life comes back to his limbs as he sinks. His chest hits the inclined concrete side of the dock, he slides down into the depths, wriggling like a bait worm. He hits the bottom chest first.

Rolling in the water, he stirs up silt, broken glass and plastic debris. He shakes loose of the weighted ropes. The water is dark, muddy and full of tiny bits of trash. Diego can feel a film slide into place over his eyeballs. The water vibrates around him, distorted shudders pinging off something in his brain that tracks the movement like sonar. 

The water is cold and so is Diego’s blood but it doesn’t matter. The water cocoons him, claims him. 

His fingers dig into the silt, close around something sharp. The Aussie didn’t bother to strip his body before he tossed him in the water. He still has his knife rig on him and some knives. He won’t need them. The bottom of the dock is full of sharp, broken things. 

Diego slithers over the silty bottom, fingers sorting through the arsenal. He shakes the rocks out of the loops of knot in the rope and ties the rope to his belt. He looks up to the surface. He can’t see the lights, his second eyelids obscure his vision, but he can sense the difference between the surface and the bottom of the dock. 

No one ever taught Diego to swim. It doesn’t matter. It’s as natural as breathing to propel himself through the water (more so, as it happens). He feels like his muscles were made for this. The water feels like home. His head breaks the surface, his feet gently kicking to keep him from sinking. He blinks, vision sliding back to normal. It has only been a minute or two. 

The Aussie and Posca’s men are loading boxes onto a small boat. The sort that would normally look out of place in an industrial harbour more used to freight ships and tankers. Diego sinks under. He eases himself along the concrete incline, clinging like a crab. He lets himself slide to the bottom as he nears the boat’s hull.   
He pushes up the surface underneath the gangplank the gang is using to load the ship. He swims out a little bit, so he can see his targets backlit by the bright lights of the harbour. 

Diego opens his mouth, nostrils snapping open (not that he’d noticed they’d pinched closed -after all, whose nostrils do that?!) His airway opens, a film of skin unrolling from his oesophagus, allowing oxygen to flow down trachea to bronchi. His lungs inflate. Diego breathes in, he breathes out, he breathes in and he breathes out, one last exhale that forces all the air from his lungs. His lungs deflate, dropping and pushing his stomach down and his sternum up. 

Throat locks, nose closes, second lids snap over. Diego dives, driving his body down, down, he hits the bottom, flips feet over head, pushes off from the bottom, launching himself up toward the surface like a missile.

He bursts up out of the water, both arms swing out in a double overarm throw. Blind his mind finds his targets. 

He hits the first guy in the neck under the chin with a piece of bottle glass. The second guy falls off the gangplank with a spear of Perspex of sheeting stuck in his eye. The splash the two bodies make is loud enough to cover Diego’s own descent. 

He is moving again, cutting under the surface of the water, his movements undulating, driven from his torso not his arms and legs. He breaks the surface, grabs a pier bollard, snatches the ankle of a third man, and hauls him under. 

Death roll. Diego bears him down, twisting and corkscrewing toward the bottom. Bubbles escape as the air is knocked loose of the dying man’s lungs. Diego ties the man’s body down with the same rope used to drown him. He knots it around a bit of metal sticking up from the silt. 

He breaks the surface. Bullets pelt the water. He sinks. Arrows forward toward the pier. The fourth man cracks his jaw on the concrete as Diego drags him under. He drowns like the third and Diego ties them together. He is up again, cresting the surface, flinging out an arm. Two men fall to his knives. Diego rips the blades from their bodies as he drags them below the surface. 

“Bloody hell,” the Aussie curses when Diego surfaces again grabbing at the pier to haul himself up. “No one told me you were part fish!”

Diego lunges but a wave of numbness sweeps over him. He loses his grip on the pier and sinks again. When he kicks to the surface a second time the Aussie isn’t where he left him. 

“Get the bloody boat moving,” the Aussie yells from on-board. “We’ve got a sodding fishman on our arses.” 

The boat’s hull is high and sheer, there is no ladder to climb aboard. Diego swims to the pier. His lungs are on fire, he has to breathe. He runs up the gangplank straight into the gunfire. He flings a rock. It caves in the skull of the shooter. 

“Oh, sod this!” 

The Aussie lunges for him. Diego feels the tingle, the numbness, the weakness sweep over him. He drops. The Aussie grins, leaning over him. Diego jerks forward and bites him on the nose. 

“Oi, what the fu—“ 

They roll across the deck. Diego can’t feel his legs. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need them. There is no part of him that is sane. No part of him that is capable of thinking. He is all instinct. One single instinct. 

Killing instinct. 

Still, instinct is all well and good, but even homicidal maniacs need working limbs to be effective. Diego ends up back in the water. One of the Aussie’s remaining cronies gets the boat motor running. Diego is forced to swim clear of the churning undertow as the boat starts to move. 

He climbs onto the pier. He can see the wheelhouse. He throws one of his retrieved knives. In his mind’s eye he sees the man in the wheelhouse. The boat is moving fast, faster than it should in the shallow dock. Diego has to keep pushing with his mind to give his knife the staying power to make the distance. 

He nearly makes it. 

The knife loses momentum and plops into the water. Diego hits the concrete of the pier. (Hypoxia is a bitch.)

Footsteps patter over the pier. The Invisible Man casts no shadow as he stands over Diego. 

“Choices, choices,” hums a disembodied voice as a Baretta appears to levitate unaided in thin air. 

“I shoot you, I get to claim the money,” Gary explains to empty air, “But I heard what Dino said. He was going to take me out. Money’s not everything.” Gary clicks the safety off. “You did stab me. A lot. So I think I’ll do you anyway.” He aims, finger easy on the trigger. 

Diego surges into consciousness, choking on an immense, gasping breath that brings him up off the pier and staggering to his feet on pure reflex alone. 

“Shit!” Gary jumps back. He readjusts his aim. 

Diego senses the movement, his brain pinging a warning. Still operating on instinct and reflex alone he snatches his very last knife and flicks it out to the side.   
Gary drops the Baretta as he clutches at the knife wedged under his chin. He tastes blood, a great gout of it spilling over his chin before he falls backwards, legs kicking once on the pier before he goes still. 

Diego doesn’t notice as Gary’s body materialises forever. His brain is a red mass of anger and murderous focus. There is not one solitary sensible thought rattling around in the hamster wheel as he leaps sideways into the water.


	13. Chapter Twelve: Bribery Gets You Nowhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which impetuous gangsters ruin everything

April 3rd 2019

Five and Patch:

“Unbelievable,” Five curled his lip as he looked down at the corpse of the invisible assassin. The depths of his siblings’ incompetence never failed to amaze him. Enough power to destroy the world, and still they couldn’t detain one man with a very pedestrian superpower. 

Crime techs buzzed around the docks, police divers bobbed up and dived down into the water and more than a few people cast curious and wary looks toward the teenager in knee socks in their midst. 

Detective Patch strode down the pier toward him, coffee cup clenched in her hand. “Do you know him?”

“This is the man who blew up the boxing gym,” Five said which was an answer, if not quite the one the detective was looking for. 

The detective was an astute woman. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Any connection to the crazies in masks who shot up Gimbles and kidnapped your brother a week ago?” she asked, voice dry as dust.

“No,” Five said. If the Commission had another one of the Miracle Forty-Three on the payroll he would’ve known about it. No doubt the old Handler would’ve enjoyed forcing the two of them to work together. 

Of course, this didn’t mean that the Commission wasn’t involved in some way – they were almost omniscient- even if they weren’t active participants nothing happened in the timeline without their knowledge, and most often, direct intervention. Still the new Handler, much like the last, was too clever to come against his family directly. 

Neither of them were addressing the fact that the dead man had died with one of Diego’s knives in his throat, or acknowledging the four other men dredged up from the bottom of the dock. This wasn’t a murder mystery. The killer’s identity was screamingly apparent.

(Five may have left bodies littering the ground wherever he went while dealing with his erstwhile former employer but that was all he left. Diego’s knives were as personalised as a calling card with a return address. Five wondered why each of his siblings persisted in making it so much harder to save them.)

Five would never admit to being relieved to find so much evidence that his brother was alive after arriving at the tea house too late; it was easier to be annoyed. 

Detective Patch sighed looking down at the body. “This is a mess.”

It wasn’t actually. Diego had hidden most of the bodies, except for the assassin. Dock workers on in the warehouses had heard gunfire and alerted the police and eye witnesses had reported an unregistered vessel docked at the pier earlier that night, but if not for the gunfire and body the scene was very neat. 

Five had eavesdropped on the witness statements, using detective Patch’s distraction and his small stature to his advantage. Diego had taken down several armed men in five minutes with no indication that any had managed to hit him. His brother might be an imbecile with all the strategic patience of a rhino in heat, but the assassin in Five could appreciate his lethal fastidiousness as he tidied up as he murdered. 

(Five was not a neat killer. He’d always sneered at the operatives who added flourishes and personal style to their kills, but he also hadn’t bothered attempting clean up. He was an untraceable killer, a man out of time who did not truly exist, hiding bodies had never been a consideration.) 

“You need to come down to the station and answer some questions,” the detective was saying. “You and your siblings clearly know more than you’re saying.” 

This was Five’s cue to leave, which he did with alacrity. 

“Sonofa—“ If anyone asked, Eudora Patch would deny stamping her foot in the aftermath of Five’s jump. 

Straightening her shoulders she went to report to Sergeant Ortega that someone needed to send a squad car over to the Umbrella Academy. If only to sit on them so they didn’t cause trouble. Not all of them could disappear in thin air like the little one. 

The roiling in Patch’s gut was anger, not worry she insisted to the little annoying voice in her head that whispered something wasn’t right about this. There was something off about all of it. Diego had violent tendencies but he’d also managed to live within the rules and avoid fatalities, which Patch recognised was not easy when you played with knives. The bodies in the water bothered her as well. The dock was deep and the divers had found them tied to the bottom. Patch hadn’t known Diego could even swim.

Then there was the boy, Five, and Patch certainly hadn’t forgotten the witness report from the donut shop shoot out about a young boy who matched Five Hargreeves description, or the matter of Klaus Hargreeves abduction. Diego had told her the masked assassins had targeted his family. Now another assassin targets him and blows up the gym. 

It was impossible not to draw a line connecting the incidents. Five’s insistence that the assassin had been one of the Miracle Forty-Three just made things worse. The city did not need to be ground zero for some bizarre comic book super hero/villain jamboree. 

Patch wanted to be furious. 

She wanted to blame Diego for screwing everything up and going off the deep end. He’d mishandled everything. He should have reported in as soon as the gym blew up. He should’ve come clean about the mess with the masked weirdos, especially if there was a connection with their active case. He’d been playing vigilante too long, he’d forgotten it was an act, not the truth. 

But as much as she blamed Diego for her inevitable premature grey hairs, she blamed Ortega as well. She’d never liked the undercover mission. Hated that it lasted so long and gave Diego a pass for his worst instincts and she’d wondered, as the Rope-A-Dope went on and on, if Ortega wasn’t turning Diego into his dope all along. 

Mostly, Patch was scared and that made her even madder. 

 

Diego:

He didn’t know how long he’d been swimming. He followed the boat as it hugged the coast before docking on Dove Tail Island. There was a complex of old derelict factories and a colony of endangered seabirds on the island and it was popular with smugglers (and twitchers). 

Diego climbed ashore using the ridge of artificial rocks, rising from the surf like a leather and wool clad merman. He had no knives and no plan. This did not stop him. Diego wasn’t chasing down a suspect, or going after the man who had tried to kill him to repay the favour anymore. He was hunting prey. Pure and simple. 

His limbs felt heavy, extremities tingling as normal blood flow resumed and his lungs resumed their usual intake of oxygen. There was salt crusted around his eyes and his head pounded with mild hypoxia and the sudden evolutionary shift of an undeveloped power suddenly put through its paces. 

Dino MacArthur was holed up in an ancient canning factory, the interior cleared out of heavy machinery, its high windows broken, letting in jagged rays of light. The high rafters of the building were invisible above a layer of dust that hung in the air with nowhere to go. 

MacArthur paced. The boat’s pilot was nowhere to be seen. 

Diego walked through the wide open doors, dripping on the poured concrete. MacArthur watched him with squint.

“Look mate,” he said, “this is getting ridiculous. I’m a busy man, got a business to handle. How about you name your price and we go our separate ways, alright?”

Diego stopped moving. Entirely. He didn’t just stop walking. He stopped breathing. He stopped blinking. He stood, dripping on the dusty floor, not moving a muscle, like someone had flipped his switch off. 

MacArthur looked him up and down. “You’re a right weirdo mate, anyone ever tell you that?” 

Diego said nothing. At this point he’d forgotten how. 

“How much?” MacArthur demanded changing tact. “You’ve been a right pain in the arse, running around scaring m’ associates. Between you and Daddy-dearest you've got Vizzini Junior spooked enough to think about backing out of our deal – and I’ll be frank, mate – m’ employer is none too pleased about that. Told me to get things back on track, and I’m a practical man. You won’t die, which - kudos to you - most folk drop real quick when I do my thing, so how’s about I write you a cheque and you buy yourself a nice beach house somewhere far from here?” 

No one had ever tried to bribe Diego before. This was because his modus operandi didn’t really allow for much chit-chat. Smashing heads and breaking bones tended to be a fast and taciturn activity. 

MacArthur scowled. “You know this silent act isn’t working on me, right mate? I’m not Posca. I’m not scared of you just ‘cause you’re some kind of fishman.” 

“Or are you angling for something else mate?” MacArthur flashed a quick smile, “Angling, get it, anglers are fishermen and you’re a fish…never mind.” 

“You want in, don’t you; want to be part of the network? Don’t know how you found out about us, but whatever, I guess it must be hard getting demoted to street thug after the celebrity treatment you lot got when you were kids.  
I could put in a good word for you, if you want. All you gotta do is back off and stay out of Khernov business, alright mate?” 

Diego had no idea what the man was talking about. He wouldn’t have understood what the man was talking about if he’d been in his right mind. Right now he had the comprehension of a shark out of water. Macarthur’s words flowed in one ear and out the other not leaving any lasting impression. 

MacArthur was stalling –his paralysis powers needed to recharge – and his man on the gangway above was taking a bloody long time to get into position with the rifle. So he was less than pleased when he heard the motor of a speedboat outside. 

The noise broke Diego out of his stupor. He turned toward the door. MacArthur lunged at him. He had no idea what was taking Robertson so long, but he’d bash the bozos brains in himself if he had to. 

Diego and MacArthur rolled across the dusty floor. MacArthur boxed his ears, Diego headbutted him. They crashed into a tower of ancient wooden cracks, causing the tower to teeter but not fall. 

Gunfire cracked through the air. Robertson, the failed sniper, fell from the gangway with a hole in his head, and a cadre of Vizzini men stormed the canning factory. 

“I’m gonna get you, you bastard!” Stefano howled, his face puffy and swollen. Mad eyed and wrinkled he brandished an uzi like an extra from Scarface. The rest of his squad opened fire. 

 

The Hargreeves Siblings:

Back in the Academy, miles from the opening salvo in a soon-to-be full-fledged mob war, Five had just finished filling in his siblings on the carnage at the docks (and the cigar bar and the tea house). 

Allison was angrily writing an entire diatribe in response to Diego’s insane recklessness and how this was going to make her chances of getting custody of Claire that much harder. Vanya was quiet and definitely not thinking about how she wished she was the one getting into gunfights all across town (why did her siblings always leave her out!) Klaus was preoccupied wondering whether to pop one pill or three – he didn’t have too many left in the bottle after all. Ben was thinking that all this was a lot more fun to deal with when he was dead. 

Which left Luther to focus on the matter at hand and what to do about, which was disastrous all fronts as his last executive decision had led to the obliteration of the entire world. 

“Do you think Diego went after MacArthur?” he asked Five.

Five glared at him. “How would I know?” he shot back.

Outside they heard the screech of tires and the wail of sirens. 

Luther’s eyes went wide. “Five can you..?” 

“Where?” Five asked tiredly. Sometimes he wondered if family was really worth it. Dolores was almost certainly laughing at him. 

“Terriman’s Wharf. It’s close to the docks.” 

The other siblings gathered close. Five gritted his teeth. Jumping with five other people through space was only marginally easier than jumping through time.

Grace’s heels clicked on the marble floor. “I’ll get the door.” 

The only response was a tremendous flash of blue light. Grace clucked her tongue. It was lovely to have Five home, but she really wished he’d remember his manners from time to time and not jump so much in the house.


	14. Chapter Thirteen: The Umbrella Academy Redux?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Vanya saves the day and there is foreshadowing of future plot developments. (Yep, the author worries this may become a series).

April 3rd 2019

Terriman’s Wharf:

The Hargreeves siblings materialised on the boardwalk in a flash of liquid blue light in broad daylight surrounded by citizens out for a stroll and tourists taking in the scenic views. 

“Five,” Luther hissed through his teeth as several cameras flashed. People were pointing and staring, murmuring. Luther hunched his shoulders trying to disappear into his overcoat. It didn’t work. 

“Look at that bloke,” someone in the crowd said, obnoxiously loudly with a British accent that had none of Dad’s refinement, “he’s built like a brick shithouse.” 

“Oh my god,” a woman exclaimed. “Is that Allison Hargreeves? Quick Ted, get a picture!” 

“Hang on,” Ted said, “I need to put another roll in the camera.”

“Allison, Allison!” Someone yelled from the back of the growing crowd. “How are you feeling? Is it true you really had your throat cut by a stalker?” 

“This is not my fault,” Five said glaring up at Luther. “You wanted the wharf. I brought you to the wharf.” 

“Holy shit. Holy shit.” A fat guy in a too-tight t-shirt at the front of the crowd exclaimed, louder than the rest. “It’s the Umbrella Academy. Holy crap. Are you guys getting back together?” 

“Wait, wait, wait,” another guy with a ridiculous bleached blond goatee said, elbowing past the fat guy. “You’re Five Hargreeves. You’re dead.” 

“Do I look dead to you, imbecile?” Five sneered. 

“Five,” Vanya admonished. 

“Wait, I know you!” The fat guy turned to Vanya. “You’re the White Violin!” 

Vanya twitched. “Um, what?” 

The fat guy was grinning. “There’s no point denying it. I’ve got all the merch, all the TV interview recordings. All the comics. You’re White Violin. The Academy’s secret weapon!”

The siblings exchanged looks. 

“Secret weapon?” Klaus mouthed to Ben. 

Ben shrugged. “Time line changes, maybe?”

“You’re Ben Hargreeves,” the fat guy told him as if he didn’t know. “Crap, man. I loved you’re last book.”

Ben had taken a step back when the guy turned on him, freezing as the crowd's attention rooted on him. He felt naked and exposed with so many eyes on him. It was sickening, realising how visible he was. How vulnerable. He’d spent seventeen years intangible and invisible. A literal ghost drifting through life. Now, everyone could see him and apparently even strangers knew more about his life than he did. The only thing that stopped him from running was the fact that he wasn’t sure his legs could carry him. 

“Is that Ben Hargreeves?” a woman with a blue Mohawk asked, pushing to the front of the crowd. “Oh my gosh,” she squealed, suddenly lunging for her overfull purse. She pulled out a battered paperback. “Please can you sign my book? I am so your biggest fan ever.” 

Ben took the book, fingers tingling and sweat on his brow. The cover picture was an abstract swirl of green and black wavering tentacles, coruscating into a dark abyss in the dead centre of the image. The book was entitled ‘What Lurks Within’ and his name was emblazoned at the bottom. 

“Can you make it out to Sheila? That’s my name. Oh my god. You have no idea how much this means to me.” 

Numbly he scribbled something vaguely English onto the flyleaf and handed the book back to Sheila in a state of shock. 

“No but seriously,” the fat guy was arguing with the guy with the goatee. “How come you haven’t aged, man? You’re Five Hargreeves, but like, that makes no sense.”

“Nothing about any of us makes sense,” Five snapped back. 

Luther decided that he had to do something. He just wasn’t sure what. Dad had always encouraged them to pose for pictures and treat the press and fans politely, but that was back when they were kids and Dad was usually with them, to guide them in what to say and how to act. 

“Oh, oh, do me. Do me.” Klaus bounced forward, knocking a stricken Ben out of the way of grabbing hands. “Who am I in this bizarro world?” 

“Uh, you’re the one without any powers,” Goatee guy said a little confused. “You got a slot on Breakfast with Andy," he added like it was a consolation, "and my girlfriend loves your advice column.” 

“What?!” Luther lurched forward, barely noticing as the crowd pushed back. “What do you mean no powers?” 

Klaus had clapped both hands over his mouth as soon as he’d heard, his eyes alight with tears. He was hunched forward as if he could barely believe it, as if the news had doubled him up. 

The guy with the goatee looked a little nonplussed and turned to the fat guy for help. The fat guy shrugged. “Yeah, that’s just how it is. You and the White Violin didn’t really go on missions much. Her because everyone knows she’s super powerful – you don’t take an A-bomb to squish ants…and you’re the dud.” 

“Really?” Klaus asked, sounding choked. He pivoted on his heel suddenly and threw up his arms, facing the bay. “Hallelujah!” He spun around again and hugged Vanya.   
“I’m, I’m just so happy you blew up the world. This timeline is so much more awesome!”

“Uh, you’re welcome?” Vanya hugged him back. 

“We need to find Diego,” Luther said. The situation was spiralling out of control. Luther had to get his siblings back on mission. 

“Bravo Luther for your expert grasp of the obvious,” Five sneered. 

He was always at his most acidly sarcastic when he’d made a mistake, and dumping them in the middle of the popular boardwalk was a mistake on his part, they’d been nothing wrong with Luther’s directions. 

“Um guys,” Vanya broke in before Luther could say anything – not that he had been struggling for a come back or anything. “I can hear gunfire.” 

“Where?” Luther swung around to look at his sister. Vanya had drifted over to the railing, looking out over the water. She pointed out toward Dove Tail Island. 

“Five – have you—“ 

“No,” Five snapped and then huffed. “Jesus. It’s like you all keep forgetting I spent forty years in an apocalyptic wasteland. There weren’t many sightseeing opportunities, Luther.” 

Luther ignored that and focused on the important matter. “We need a boat.” 

Allison, who had been writing out autographs a few feet away, scribbled something on her pad and held it up to the chattering crowd.   
[Does anyone have a motorboat? We need to rescue our idiot brother.]

 

Diego:

MacArthur dropped two of Stefano’s men, literally causing them to fall to the ground like puppets with cut strings. Diego hid behind the tower of crates with his hands over his ears, the staccato bursts of gunfire reminding him of the Commission’s Gasmask shock troops. 

The blankness that had travelled with him through the water to the island had left his system and now Diego was fully aware of just how much shit he was in. He was also out of knives. 

(More than the memory of not drowning, or the way he’d felt alive in the water in a way he’d never felt before, being without any of his knives was what truly frightened Diego.)

MacArthur had somehow managed to grab one of the goons’ uzis. He opened fire while grinning like a madman. Stefano was nowhere to be seen. Diego started to crawl on the floor behind the crates. There had to be something he could throw around here somewhere. He found a crowbar lying in a pile of broken timbers in a dusty corner of the old factory. He tested the weight and heft. Swung it experimentally. 

MacArthur ducked behind the fast splintering crates as Stefano’s goons returned a volley of gunfire. Diego flinched. His power tried to track every bullet’s trajectory through the air, his brain aching with the vibrations. It was too much. He couldn’t focus on a single bullet in the barrage. (Multiple trajectories had always been his weakness, especially when he hadn’t started the object in motion.)

He could track bodies however. 

Popping up from behind the low wall of crates, Diego threw the crowbar. It whipped end over end through the air, clipping one guy on the side of the head before banking and making a sharp right angle to strike a second. Both men dropped to the ground unconscious. Diego dropped back down. 

MacArthur nodded to him, a glimmer of respect in his expression. 

“Truce, mate?” he asked. “We need to get rid of these arseholes.” 

Diego didn’t exactly agree but he didn’t disagree either. His voice was locked up inside him, words beyond his reach. One of the crates, turned on its side, contained a small cluster of old, rusted heavy duty industrial nuts and bolts. Diego grabbed up a handful, sifting them for weight and balance. 

He threw them through the air as soon as there was a break in the gunfire. He couldn’t control every projectile. There were too many. His power grabbed hold of the largest metal nuts. He sent one into the forehead of a gunman popping up from around one of the naked metal support beams holding up the gangway. The second struck the man’s hand, knocking his gun away. 

MacArthur used the cover to jump up and spray a round into the air. “Yippee Ki-Yay!” 

Diego blinked at him. MacArthur shrugged. “Seemed like the thing to say, mate.”

Diego threw more nuts and bolts, the barrage acting as cover for MacArthur who used his power this time to pop up and drop another goon. 

Diego spotted a shadow moving above him. He looked up to the gangway and saw the muzzle of a gun poke down over the railing. He threw one of the heavy nuts in his hand straight up, willing it to ascend faster than gravity normally allowed. The nut struck the barrel just as Stefano fired, sending his aim askew. The bullet bit pinged off the corrugated roof. 

MacArthur spun around, took in Stefano above and then looked to Diego who was already throwing another nut. 

“Oh you little sod,” MacArthur bared his teeth at Stefano. “Alliance be buggered. I’m gonna kill you.”

A voice that sounded suspiciously like Patch’s rang out in Diego’s mind, reminding him of the salient points beyond mere survival. If MacArthur killed Stefano the case against the Vizzinis would fall apart. They needed Stefano alive to give them the names of his contacts and connections with the Khernov syndicate. 

The police would never be able to hold MacArthur long enough to interrogate him, if they could hold him at all before he killed them. 

Stefano had to survive or the entire Rope-A-Dope mission was a failure. 

Diego tackled MacArthur, slamming into him before he could either shoot Stefano or use his power. The tower of crates, damaged by gunfire, collapsed. Diego and MacArthur were consumed in a tsunami of wood. 

Or at least, they should have been. The crates hung suspended in mid-air. Floating.

Distracted, Diego was unprepared when MacArthur flipped them, straddled him and raised both fists. Diego threw his arms up to defend himself… 

…and a beam of white light struck MacArthur in the back lifting him clean into the air. Diego scrambled to his feet. He recognised that dangerous white light.

Vanya stood in the middle of the factory warehouse, arms raised like a conductor. She was grinning and radiating smugness brighter than the light surrounding her. Five crouched on a pile of crates just behind her, toting an uzi. 

The few remaining goons still standing dropped their weapons and raised their hands in surrender. 

 

Luther:   
Five minutes earlier:

The tugboat chuffed through the water. Luther loomed over the captain, a wizened old man with a beanie and a heavy wool sweater who had only agreed to take them out to the island when Allison waved her check book at him. 

“Can you go any faster?” he asked eyes on the island too far away. 

“Piss off,” the captain snapped, just as he had the other four times Luther tried to talk to him. 

Luther left the wheelhouse, trying not to stomp in case his foot went through the deck. 

Five was perched on the deck rail at the – what was the front end of a boat called? The prow, the Fore? Luther shook his head. It didn’t matter. Vanya stood beside him. Her hair was whipping back from her head in a breeze that no one else could feel. She was also floating several inches off the ground. 

(Luther decided not to notice). 

“Can you reach the shore from here?” he asked Five. 

He wasn’t anxious. Number Two could handle himself. And, according to Five, he’d been lying to them all anyway, keeping his undercover status from them so there was no telling what else he’d been hiding. 

Luther didn’t know how he felt about that. 

He’d never understood Diego’s vigilante thing. Not the crime fighting part, that he understood, and he even sort of approved. He and Diego were the only ones who had kept Dad’s mission alive in adulthood, after all. It was the part where Diego decided he was better off alone that Luther didn’t understand. 

Before the accident Luther had been doing important work saving more lives than Diego could beating up home invaders and it had seemed like selfishness to him that Diego put his petty squabbles with Dad above utilising his power to its full potential and helping Luther save more people. 

Now he wasn’t sure what to think. Diego was a police officer, he’d taken an oath. He had other people than Luther he took orders from. 

(He’d renounced the Academy. Choosing to give his loyalty to the police and not dad - or Luther. How could Luther ever trust him again?)

“Luther?” Vanya was staring at him with her creepy eyes. Her clothing had turned white again (Luther really wanted to know how she did that). “Five said he can get me to the island.” 

Luther’s first instinct was a loud and definitive no. Vanya was dangerous and mostly untrained. The team should travel as one. Five should take him, Luther, to the island. He was the team leader after all.

But…

Luther had failed before, at the Icarus. He’d made the wrong call (even though he wasn’t sure why it was the wrong call even now). The rest of the team – the family – didn’t like or trust him very much. And Luther had read his promise note, the one Vanya had given him, the one written in his own hand. The one that promised to do better, to be better. The one that promised he would be a leader and a brother his siblings could be proud of. 

Vanya and Five were both watching him now but it was Vanya with her glowing eyes that Luther couldn’t look away from. He remembered squeezing her against his chest, remembered how she’d beat at him and he’d barely felt it through the thick hide covering his torso. 

He thought…he thought that maybe trust was something that had to be given, before it could be received. 

“Go,” he said, “and, uh, be careful.” 

The last thing he saw before Five jumped them clear of the boat was Vanya smiling at him like she actually meant it.


	15. Chapter Fourteen: All's Well That Ends Well?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which Things Fail to find Resolution but End all the Same. Such is Life.

April 3rd 2019   
(will this day ever end?)

Diego sat in the interrogation room, elbows on the table and head in his hands. His hair was stiff with salt, sweater torn and pants ingrained with sand and grit. The door to the interrogation room opened behind him.

“You really did it this time, Hargreeves,” Ortega dropped into the chair opposite, slapping a thick manila file down on the table between them. 

Diego sat up. “Ray, where are my siblings?” 

Six hours ago Vanya had saved his ass and Diego would be more pissed about that except that she’d looked so happy about it even Diego couldn’t ruin it.

(That and she’d probably would’ve punted his ass across the Atlantic if he’d tried.)

Ortega’s moustache twitched, his lips thinning into a pursed line. “What do you think they’re doing? Posing for the goddamn Paps and making all our lives difficult.” 

“They’re not under arrest?” 

Diego still didn’t know how they’d tracked him to Dovetail Island, or why. He and Luther had gotten into an argument as soon as the big lug crashed into the factory (too late to do anything, asshole) and started acting like Diego owed him an explanation and not the other way around. 

Patch and a detachment of S.W.A.T officers had stormed the island around the point Allison leapt on his back and smacked him around the head with her notepad. 

(Diego was still sore over the fact that Patch wouldn’t let him cuff Stefano Vizzini, even though the bastard was his collar.) 

“Don’t push me, Diego,” she’d said, backing him into a support pillar with a finger jammed into his chest, “You could go to jail for this!”

Diego had been led to the showers back at the precinct and then shoved into the interrogation room to stew. Patch had brought him takeout a few hours ago and told him his family had been separated for interview. 

“Your little brother is a real pain in the ass,” she’d told him leaning against the closed door, watching him inhale fries. 

“Little brother?” 

“Five,” she’d rolled her eyes. “He keeps doing that thing he does – popping into the cells and trying to get to MacArthur.” 

“Shit, Patch, that guy is dangerous, don’t—“ 

“That guy is still out cold. I don’t know what your sister did, but whatever it was, he hasn’t woken up yet.”

Diego winced, mind flashing back to the last handful of seconds of the fight, after Vanya had lifted MacArthur off his feet. 

MacArthur had tried to choke out Vanya. She’d taken out the back wall of the factory and sent MacArthur into the ocean. Diego had had to dive in after him and drag his sorry ass to the surface before he drowned. Either Vanya’s power or the impact with the water had knocked him out cold. He hadn’t regained consciousness even after Diego had performed CPR. 

“No,” Ortega said, snapping Diego’s attention back to the present. “We’ve got nothing to hold your family with,” Ortega scowled. “According to the D.A. levitation ain’t a crime.” 

Diego tensed. “Then why am I—“ 

Ortega flipped open the folder, pulling out several glossy photos. “You want the list, Hargreeves? We got you on reckless endangerment; property damage; multiple counts of assault.” He shuffled the photos and shoved an eight by ten of the Invisible Man, very visibly dead, across the table. 

Ortega’s expression was grim. “You’re lucky this guy has an Interpol file an inch thick, or you’d be looking at twenty to life.” 

“What the hell?” Diego rose half out of his chair, “I was doing my job, Ray!” 

“You smashed through the window of Sal’s in broad daylight!” Ortega yelled back. “You took a knife to a shootout at the docks!”

Diego stared at him. “Yeah, I did,” he snapped. “And it worked! We got Stefano, we got Khernov’s guy in North America. What the hell, Ray? This is a win.” 

“You brought two international assassins into our city,” Ortega slapped his hands on the table top and pushed up out of his chair. “You nearly ruined this entire operation.” 

“Bullshit,” Diego snarled. “I did my job.” 

Rope-A-Dope. He was always the bait. The loose cannon. He did everything he was supposed to. 

(Which was everything a ‘good’ cop wasn’t allowed to do. Diego seethed. This was police academy all over again. He was going to lose everything he’d worked for.) 

“You’re never going to work undercover again, Hargreeves. You’ve blown it.” Ortega sank back into the chair and shook his head. 

“The captain wants your badge for this. You’re just lucky we caught a break with MacArthur. But now we’ve got the entire alphabet soup out there, blowing up the phone.” He glared. “We’re going to lose MacArthur. The CIA want him.” 

Diego’s fists closed at his sides. Rage locked his jaw and throbbed behind his eyes. His badge, the same one he’d never even worn. A job he’d never been allowed to claim. And Ortega just sat there, acting like Diego was the one with the problem? 

All these years trying to live by Ortega’s rules, playing both sides of the field, doing a damn good job and never getting any credit. Just like when he was a kid, hoping and hoping that one day he’d be number one. Ignoring the shit going on around him, hating his siblings because Sir Reginald didn’t raise them to love each other, only to compete. Diego had felt alone then and he was alone now. 

(Rope-A-Dope. Yeah, and he was the dope.) 

He was half out of his seat again when Ortega stopped him. 

“Sit your ass down, Hargreeves,” he snapped. “Your done for undercover, not police work.” 

Diego sat down. “You said the captain wants my badge,” he said.

“He does, but he knows he’s not going to get it. Stefano is singing like a bird, but we’re going to need you to testify.” He shook his head. “And we need someone to deal with your family. It’s a media circus out there.” Ortega looked at him, tired, frustrated and trapped. 

“They won’t shut up.” He said with deep foreboding. 

 

Luther:

Luther was certain that wherever Dad was now, he was severely disappointed in them. Nervously he shifted his weight on the front steps outside the police precinct and glanced down at Vanya who was almost glowing with pride. 

(Not literally thankfully. But Luther was ready to whisk her away if that changed.)

“Well,” Vanya hedged speaking into the microphone that had been shoved under her nose by a female reporter from a local network. “We were looking for Diego. He’s the one working for the police—“

“So you confirm that Diego is a member of the police force?” 

“Um, yes?” 

“And does this mean that the Umbrella Academy now works in conjunction with the city once again?” 

“Uh…”

“This was an emergency situation,” Luther interrupted, taking the mic from the reporter and away from Vanya. “We acted to support the police’s efforts to apprehend a dangerous felon with super abilities.” 

Vanya had jumped forward as soon as they’d spotted the press gathered outside, eager to talk as the press called out for the White Violin. Luther had tried to intervene but Allison had stopped him, grabbing his wrist and digging her nails into the meat of his hand. He’d could’ve broken the grip, but it was Allison and she’d ignored him more or less since they’d woken up in this new timeline. 

“Does this have anything to do with the attacks of Salieri’s Cigar Bar and The Russian Tea House, both believed to be connected with organised crime—“

A journalist from a local tabloid yelled over the female reporter, “Five Hargreeves any statement on how you’re alive?” 

Five was standing alongside Allison, Klaus and Ben, all of them had lined up in their numerical order just like Dad had trained them to do. Luther heard Ben mutter to Klaus over Five’s head: “It is weird not being the one asked that question.” 

Five managed to look down his nose at the gathered assemblage of press and media, despite being shorter than all of them. 

“Time travel,” he said.

Luther clenched his fists as around him flashbulbs popped and voices rose. The noise only getting worse when the doors to the precinct opened and Diego stepped outside, still dressed in his dried but water-stained vigilante outfit. Luther winced, imagining Dad’s outrage from beyond the grave. 

“Diego - - is it true you’ve been working undercover with city PD to bring down the Vizzini outfit?”

“Diego any statement regarding rumours that you were involved in the attacks on Salieri’s and The Russian Tea House?” 

"Time travel? Is that code for something?" 

"Five, what can you tell us about the long standing rumour you were kicked off the team as a kid for not being cute enough?"

A short, dark man in uniform had followed Diego outside. The man strode forward to stand in front of the press. 

“I’m Sergeant Raymond Ortega. The department will be holding a formal press conference at City Hall tomorrow at 10am. Until then, I’d suggest you leave.”   
“Sergeant, will this conference be in conjunction with the Umbrella Academy.” 

Ortega shot Luther a hard look, “Yes,” he growled. 

Luther could easily see over the heads of everyone gathered on the steps and so he was able to see the sudden smug smirk flash across Five’s face. What had he done now? 

 

April 4th 2019 - Somewhere Else

Douglas Montefiore sweats. The Don has a TV mounted to the wall of his study tuned to the press conference at City Hall that was yet to start. Giacomo hasn’t said anything since the conference started. Ruby, his favourite Chihuahua curled up on her favourite pillow on his lap. 

Stefano is talking to the police and the FBI and every other moron with a badge out there. And it’s Doug’s fault. It was his idea to approach Diego Hargreeves; he should’ve known the freak was on the P.D’s payroll. 

“Don,” he begins refusing to cower. He’s been consiglieri for twenty years. He hasn’t put a foot wrong in all that time, but now the memory of the note he’d left in Hargreeves room weighs heavily on his mind. 

The police already have Stefano. Now thanks to Doug they could get the rest of them too. 

Giacomo flicks his fingers, eyes still rooted on the TV. “Dougie, Dougie,” he said, “my old friend, how long have been friends?” 

Doug mopped his brow, tasting cold sweat in at the back of his throat. “I’ll take responsibility for my failure, Don. I will not let this harm the Family.” He eyed Roddy at the back of the room. He’d brought the kid into the Family but he knew Roddy would put one between his eyes without hesitating if the Don ordered him to. 

“I know you will Doug,” Giacomo adjusted the pink ribbon on the top of Ruby’s head and met Doug’s gaze with rheumy eyes. “You’ve always done what’s best for the Family. Cynthia and the children will be well cared for.” 

Doug closed his eyes and breathed through his nose. He and Giacomo had risen together from the streets, built the Family man by man, piece by piece. They’d forged connections, made themselves a force to be reckoned with, but Doug had not become Consiglieri being a fool. Failure equalled death. Stefano would get his and so would Doug. 

“I thought I could get the freak to take out Stefano without getting the police involved,” he said, wanting to be sure Giacomo knew he hadn’t betrayed him through anything other than incompetence. 

Ruby yipped as Giacomo rose from his chair and walked around his large desk. Doug kept his eyes closed, listening to the soft shush-hush of Giacomo’s loafers over the thick carpet and the tell-tale click as Roddy flicked the safety off. 

“Dougie,” Giacomo touched the side of Doug’s face, “My friend, you and Roddy are going to take a little drive.” 

Doug took a breath to say that he understood, to assure Giacomo that he understood that this was his fault and the natural consequence of his actions when there was a strange noise, like a wet ripping sound in the air. 

Doug dropped to the ground the instant he heard gunfire, acting on instinct he threw his body over Giacomo to shield him. Ruby yipped excitedly. Roddy gasped, wet and bloody, and there was a thump as his body hit the ground. 

Doug looked up from the ground. A boy in knee socks stood in front of him, Roddy’s Glock almost too large for his hands. 

“Don Giacomo Vizzini?” The boy asked. 

“Who the hell—“ Doug reached for his own firearm. There was a flash of liquid blue light, dazzling bright and the next instant Doug was eating carpet, head ringing from a kick the back of his skull. 

“I want to discuss terms of a truce,” the boy said from behind the desk. 

Doug sat up and turned around in time to see the boy settle into Giacomo’s chair.   
The door to the study burst open and Reggie and Tonio raised guns at the intruder, who immediately ducked down behind the desk only to rise a moment later with Ruby clutched against his chest. 

“Shoot and the dog gets it,” he warned pressing the Glock to the struggling animal’s side. 

“Put the guns down,” Giacomo pushed up from the carpet. “You’re Umbrella Academy,” he said. 

Doug felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. He'd thought for sure they'd be safe during the damned press conference.

The boy smiled. “My brother told me you wanted to speak with him. I decided to come in his place. Diego isn’t good at negotiating.” 

“And you are?” 

“Very,” he nodded over to Reggie and Tonio, “Send your men out and we can talk.” 

“You’re crazy,” Doug scoffed. “What’s to stop us—“

There was another flash of blue and a second later Reggie was on the ground with a fountain pen stuck in his neck and the boy was standing over Tonio’s prone form, his foot pressing into his trachea. 

“I have superpowers, you cretin. I’m the one you can’t stop.” 

“What do you want?” Giacomo asked, shooting Doug a sidelong look that clearly said that the quick and dignified death waiting for him five minutes ago was now off the table. Fear gripped his stomach for Cynthia and the boys. 

“I want all the information on Khernov you have.” 

“You should talk more with your big brother kid,” Giacomo scoffed, “I don’t have a deal with Khernov.” 

“I’m not an idiot,” the boy scoffed, “You allowed Stefano to think he was working behind your back so you could draw the syndicate to the city. You were hoping to use my brother to remove Stefano and disrupt the syndicate so you could take over their domestic operations.”

Doug and Giacomo exchanged a look. “How the hell do you know that?”

The boy rolled his eyes. “Anyone with a modicum of intellect could work it out. This was a set up from the beginning.” He smirked. “A Rope-A-Dope, if you will.” 

“So you know,” Giacomo shrugged, sitting up on the floor and gathering Ruby in his arms. “How much you want for your silence boy?” 

The boy smiled. 

Doug had the distinct feeling that, dead man or not, he was the lucky one in this situation. At this dead, he wouldn't have to deal with the Umbrella Academy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the delay in getting this chapter up. I started writing this story without an outline (you can probably tell I've been making this up as a go along). That really came back to haunt me when I realised I couldn't figure out how to wrap it up! As an apology for the delay I deliver this final chapter and epilogue as a package deal.


	16. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which Things Don't Quite End After All. Again, Much Like Life.

(Some Days Later)

An unmarked prisoner transport van drives through the night. Inside Dino MacArthur lay on a gurney heavily sedated and strapped down. Five armoured guards watched him. The paperwork said he was being transported to the nearest Supermax to await trial in solitary, his only contact with other living beings conducted through thick bullet proof glass. 

The transport never arrives at its destination. 

It happens like this…

First a pyrokinetic called Nazeem lights up the asphalt in front of the van, causing the driver to swerve and the van to fishtail into a ditch alongside the deserted road chosen because it was isolated. 

Next a woman called Ebiere with retractable bone claws rips out the lock on the doors. 

After that, a man called Theodore who appears fairly unremarkable walks into the hail of gunfire unleashed by the startled and dishevelled guards. He stands there for a moment, allowing the bullets to ricochet off his force field and riddle the walls, floor and bodies of the guards careful to make sure that none of the ricochets endanger MacArthur who sleeps on undeserved. 

Ebiere helps him release MacArthur from his restraints. He and Ebiere carry MacArthur across the fallow field to where the getaway vehicle is waiting for them. The car is driven by Sookie. There is also nothing immediately remarkable about Sookie. 

(This is obviously not the case, but a little mystery is good for the soul). 

Nazeem lights up the transport, running and hitting the dirt in the field just before the gas tank explodes. He could have left the transport alone, but Nazeem is, happily and conveniently enough, a firebug in every way. He drags himself away from the blaze with difficulty. He loves the smell of burning gasoline. 

Sookie glares at him when he slips in the passenger seat. 

“What’s next?” Theodore asks from the backseat of the cramped sedan. MacArthur is propped up in the seat between he and Ebiere, drooling a little. 

Sookie rolls her eyes and thrusts a newspaper through the gap between the front and backseat. Theodore unrolls the newspaper. 

“You could just sign, y’know,” he mutters and reaches up to flick on the dome light above his head. 

The headline legend reads. Umbrella Academy Rise from Obscurity to Save City from Super Powered Terrorists. 

“As if,” Nazeem spits out aggrieved peering at the headline upside down and twisted around in his seat. “They haven’t even met us yet.” 

In the front seat Sookie smiles, slow and dangerous and her deft fingers move through the air. 

[Let’s go fix that.] she signs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone who has read, kudos and/or commented on this story. It means a lot. I've enjoyed writing this story, even if the subplots got a way from me a bit! I hope that you have enjoyed reading it too.


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